Family Easter Pics

I just realized I hadn't posted these fabulous pics! We had a busy morning because Sterling was singing in sacrament but Sterling promised me we'd take a family pic right after sacrament before taking the kids to primary and then my good friend Brooke Sant happened to be standing in the parking lot (she's done our family photos before as well as my sister Megan's when she visited) so she snapped a couple. It was the best!

Not the best smiles, but the girls' cute dresses!

This is unrelated, but these photos are from last week--Kami this dress is SOOOOO adorable on Molly!

Also last Sunday it was pretty much raining like CRAZY all day long, so we played inside. And it was the best.

The End.

POOL DAYS

After a couple weeks of waffling weather-which was appreciated--the heat has finally hit. And we have gone from 40% humidity to 85% humidity. It feels like...Miami. Like when we moved here in June and I felt suffocated walking outside, haha. So Ruthie gets home from school at 1230, we eat lunch, Will takes a nap, I usually get impatient and wake him up from his nap at 230, we head to the pool and stay there til dinnertime. Our dinners have definitely gone downhill (who wants to dinner prep when you could be swimming?!?) but it's totally worth it. Ruth's freckles are appearing at an alarmingly adorable rate and bedtime is a breeze because they are so exhausted. The pool is definitely a Florida highlight. Also--we haven't quite hit the summer rains yet (we've had a few, but it hasn't hit three times a day constancy) so that means we have our window of sunshine!

This entire end octagon-ish area is 3 feet deep. Ruth LOVES it because she and Will throw dive sticks in over and over again while she swims down to get them. 

Those teeth, haahaa!

She wanted me to take one of her underwater. 

 Update on our little family: baby is breech. Blah. We submitted an application for an apartment in Delray Beach (which is our favorite location near Lake Worth/West Palm Beach where Sterling will be) and are crossing our fingers. I really hate the waiting games around here, but oh well. If we don't get accepted for this one it will be a MAD SCRAMBLE to get approved for another one before June 1st. We'll try to move the weekend of June 9/10 because Sterling finishes classes on the 8th. Sterling STARTS on Monday and that means not having him around for dinner anymore again. Sigh---I was diligent today and put together menus, and we'll see if I can muster up the energy every night to actually make them happen. Why is cooking so much harder without a hubby? It's just not fun to cook for kids who only eat one thing and whine about the rest. I put together all the organ hymns for sacrament meeting for the next month and a half and it's weird that that'll be the last time I do that--it's fairly tricky since they want every other song to be spanish and then english, but not every hymn is in spanish, so everything has to be checked. Ruthie has quite a few little 'graduation' things from preschool set for this coming month and I'm trying to throw together a final piano recital for my students that I won't be teaching anymore--sad! I put it all on the calendar today and I have a feeling that May is going to FLY by with all the little things going on (OB appts, getting kids' immunization records transferred, etc.) and then a few big things, and then it will be June. Ready or not, it'll be baby time in no time! I just bought matching July 4th outfits for everyone, and you have no idea how excited that made me for a baby! Matching girl AND BOY outfits! So fun! I love July 4th. 

Molly still talks nonstop. She's pretty funny though and I've been enjoying her little personality so much lately. Ruth and Will have been learning new chores and Will was BEGGING to get to learn to clean the tub this morning for his Saturday's work. So after I let him, and then inspected it and told him what a great job he did, he says "I got ALLLLLLL the Rupee hairs out!" Good man, Will, good man. You will make a good husband someday. And Ruthie DOES have quite a lot of hairs that end up in the tub, haha. He likes to try and spell like Ruth too and it's the greatest. His biggest concern is checking the difference between W and M--because W is for his name, but he often draws it as an M and we have to correct it. It's hilarious though. He'll usually just throw the paper aside and say "Molly can have that one for her name then." haha.  He also helped me make cookies yesterday while Ruth was at school (Molly was completely uninterested and played with her Merida barbie the whole time) and it was hilarious because they had the cookies after lunch and he would ask Ruth "Rupe, do you know what the brown things are? Those are chocolate chips. Do you know what that crunchy part is? That is oatmeal. We actually put oatmeal in our cookies. I put them in. All by myself." HAAHAA. Ruth has been working on reading--so she'll sound out and spell little words all the time and I can't get over how smart she is. Particularly because I haven't pushed it AT ALL and she only learns the letters at PreK and she's basically just teaching herself. This week she was supposed to work on counting 1-100, so I'd have her do it in the car. But that got easy, so we practiced counting by tens. And then we started pointing to every road sign and asking her what number it was. The five digit ones are a little too much, haha, but I am soooo impressed with how quick kids learn things!!!  We live on 117th street, so she gets to practice past 100 and she picked it up no problem. 

That's a wrap!

Easter Fun!

 

I love egg dyeing. I'm pretty sure we've done it every year since we got married (thanks to Sterling's fam for always holding it at their house!) so it is the one thing we HAVE to fit in for Easter. Oh, on that note---I bought the 25 Days of Christ (which was originally made for Christmas) and we had two FHE's on it. While I had to keep things pretty simple for our kids' age right now, I LOVE the tradition (also, I'm super proud of my crafty skills, because I bought the cheaper, unfinished version--and they turned out really cute!) and I am super excited to have that to incorporate into all of our Easters from now on. I really like the idea of adding it into Easter, instead of Christmas. Christmas has a lot of tradition to help us focus on Christ, but I feel like Easter is much less structured, and it is so important. Basically it is 25 ornaments (that you can just hang up with string instead of a tree for Christmas) that tell the story of the life of Christ and His resurrection. 

I put a fitted sheet around our table so I could let the kids go to town more and not worry about it. They dyed eggs for about an hour and twenty minutes and all the spills were in the last five minutes. Of course, haha.

Glitter! It actually worked really well.

That row of all pink eggs is Molly's and that row of all blue eggs is Will's, haha. Surprise, surprise.

And on to Easter!!! The kids got books and had to find their baggie of candy. The night before was hilarious---they all went straight to sleep in anticipation of the Easter bunny coming because he can't come if you aren't asleep! Molly got Silly Sally (which she loves, but at first would turn upside down because she wants Silly Sally to be right side up haaahaaahaa) and a new We're Going On A Bear Hunt because it's her favorite but our old one fell to pieces.

Ruthie got two books by Astrid Lindgren--the author of Pippi Longstocking. We haven't started them yet, but she's sure excited!

Will got two books that are already loved. Fables has been SOOOOO loved. Not just by him, but by daddy! They can always convince Sterling to read a couple more pages because Sterling likes it sooo much, haha!

 

Ruthie's school put on an Easter egg hunt and it had a bunch of things--jump house, popcorn, shaved ice, decorating cookies, talking about the passover and getting grape juice and flatbread.

 

That ended on a not so pleasant note, which included me leaving two children unattended while I carried my heaviest, usually best behaved, screaming, kicking, hyperventilating child to the van. While I had contractions the entire time. And then had Sterling discipline later because I knew my temper had to calm down before I dealt with that mess. Isn't parenting awesome? 

That meant that on Sunday we had all day to focus on Easter, and that made me really happy. We spent the morning practicing a solo for Sterling (which he did beautifully and I spent the entire time trying not to cry so that I could play decently) and the afternoon bonding as a family over Mariokart, haha. Actually, Ruth has some serious skill in bowling and schooled Sterling--haha! Sometimes I think Sterling might be too tall for where our sensor is. Will can do the golf game now and watching him adjust his stance is the cutest thing in my life. Happy Easter everyone! Oh yeah--and I got released from the primary presidency!!! So I actually got to enjoy a wonderful, Christ-focused lesson in Relief Society after playing piano in primary (we combine so there is only one singing time). While we still juggle Sterling leading the singing while I play organ in sacrament meeting and leave our kids unattended on the bench, at least now Sterling is just a sub for Elders Quorum teaching and I only have to play piano in primary. We went from about six callings to two. It feels SOOOO relaxing and nice. The new primary presidency would have been AWESOME to be a part of (hello english speakers!!!) but I'm glad they've got it handled and I can just relax for a couple of weeks at the piano.