Easter

Happy Easter, everyone! As I often say, Easter is one of my favorite holidays because we can remember the loving sacrifice of our Savior while also stuffing our faces with chocolate - both of which are good for the soul! This Easter, we gathered at my mom's house for the big family dinner. Before we ate, we had a little Easter egg hunt for the kids. Simon caught on right away, and started filling his basket. Korinne, of course, is only about 8 months old and too young to really hunt for eggs. But she was an expert on sitting in the grass and looking cute in her bunny ears:We had asked Joey and Kristin to wait until Simon had collected his eggs before they started their egg hunt. (Simon's was very simple and easy and located in the front yard, whereas Joey & Kristin's hunt was more difficult and in the back yard). Kristin was very impatient, and tried to sneak off to the back yard to start finding eggs. When we scolded her, she started to cry and suddenly didn't want to find eggs at all. She refused to participate, even after Joey had started finding eggs and filling his basket. I pulled her to the side and said that I knew she was excited before, and we didn't mean to upset her by telling her to wait. Then I told her that by not looking for eggs at all, she was really missing out. She was only hurting herself by not enjoying the fun. She remained sulky. That is, until Joey ran out of room in his basket. While Kristin was pouting, he'd been going around the yard finding eggs. His basket was full, but there were still eggs to be found. So he decided to dump out the eggs he had so far on the seat of the porch swing. Once he walked away in search of other eggs, Kristin jumped up, ran over and started filling her basket with the eggs Joey had left. She is SUCH A STINKER!Oh, look at that. Kristin has a FULL basket, even though she's only been "looking for eggs" for about 30 seconds. STINKER!Meanwhile, Joey kept looking for hidden eggs. And Simon spent most of his time thinking, "Now, how do I open these darn things?"We tried to get a group photo, but Simon was tired and we were all hungry. Also, Joey was a little bitter after Kristin's egg-stealing incident. So we headed upstairs for the big feast after snapping this shot:The meal was terrific, as always. Mom made both a ham and a turkey. There was mashed potatoes & gravy, stuffing, green bean casserole, crescent rolls, and lots of deviled eggs. Delish! For dessert, I made a lemon blueberry bundt cake. I also made these delicious and mildly addictive chocolate peanut butter bars. What's a holiday if you don't have two desserts?

After eating, we played some board games and then took a few family photos. Here I am with Tandy and Alicia:Here's Mom with Korinne. Here's a shot of Sean and Wendy.And here is a shot of the Sparks Family - Kory, Korinne and Tandy. Kory has had some pretty serious health issues lately, and was in and out of the hospital last month. He's hopefully going to get his kidney transplant sometime in the next couple months. We're glad he was able to join us!Hope you all had a wonderful Easter! I love that it's Springtime. You know what that means! Gardening, gardening, gardening! Expect more updates soon!

International Fair

March 20th was the International Cultural Fair at the kids' school. This is the second year, and it's amazing to see how much the Fair grew this time around. There were so many booths and activities! It was amazing. The International Fair is the school's main fundraiser, so when the Fair does well it benefits all the children. The money funds field trips and buys new classroom supplies and equipment. And it keeps us from doing other fundraisers like selling wrapping paper or candy. For the International Fair, each classroom is assigned a certain country. They do a class project on that country, learning about its people and customs. And then for the Fair itself, they have a game booth relating to that country, and they do a performance on stage. This year Joey's class was assigned Spain. For their performance, they did a Flamenco dance. (Or "flamingo dance" as Kristin put it). Here's Joey getting ready in his classroom:And here are all the boys lining up just before going on stage. That's Joey's teacher in the background. I think she was the one who choreographed the dance.Here are a couple very short snippets from the performance. This blog won't upload very large files, so I had to keep them short and sweet. But hopefully you can get the general idea. Joey is in the first row of boys on the left, and he's the 3rd boy back. It's hard to see him, but I did the best I could. There were a lot of people on the field!




Sorry those clips are so short!

Here is a photo of Kristin and her class practicing their dance. Their assigned country was South Africa, and they did a dance to a Ladysmith Black Mambazo song called "Mama." All the kids were supposed to dress in the colors of certain animals. The kids in gray were supposed to be elephants, the ones in yellow were giraffes, the ones in orange were lions, and the ones in black & white were zebras. Kristin was a zebra. I bought a piece of zebra-print fabric and made her a quick tunic. It didn't exactly look professional, but it worked. After the performances were over, it was time to enjoy the Fair. There were several booths with different games the kids could play. They'd win tickets for participating, and then the tickets could be redeemed for prizes. Both Joey and Kristin won several tickets, but we never made it to the prize booth. The games were fun enough by themselves, I guess. Also, both of them really wanted to get their faces painted. What is it with kids and face painting? Anyway, the line for face painting seemed to be a mile long, but we waited patiently in the hot sun. Kristin got a butterfly:And Joey got a dog face:Both kids asked to have the paint removed as soon as they got home. Which means that after waiting in line for an hour or more to have their faces painted, they left the designs there for approximately 15 minutes. Oh well. We got the photos, at least!

By the end of the day, we all felt like this:It was great to go home to a nice, cool house and relax. The International Fair was really fun, and we're already looking forward to next year!

Seedlings

The weather has been very rainy the last few weeks, but Spring is right around the corner. It's still technically planting season, but I still have to get the garden plots ready. Our soil is kind of crummy, so I need to beef it up with some compost and fertilizer. Hoping to attack that project this weekend. For now, I just have these adorable little seedlings sprouted on my kitchen counter. I'm so proud of them, even though I know that it doesn't exactly take much to sprout seedlings. You can sprout seeds on a wet paper towel, for Pete's sake. Still! This represents the beginning of my garden! These seedlings are the beginning of several tomato plants, a couple cucumbers, some basil and some rosemary. They'll probably go into the ground sometime in the next couple weeks.

While we're waiting for the vegetables and herbs to be planted, we've kept ourselves busy planting flowers. Last night Joey, Kristin and I planted several sunflowers and cosmos in a few different locations around the yard. I also have some nasturtium to plant, but didn't get to that yet. In addition, we also have a fairly large group of "volunteer" sunflowers that have come up in the area where we used to have a bird feeder. They're already over 3 feet tall! I have no idea what they'll look like when they finally bloom, but they have several flower heads on them already. I love watching the garden come alive!

Simon's Current Obsessions

Simon currently has two obsessions: things with wheels, and yogurt.This wooden train belonged to Matt when he was a kid. We just recently took it out of storage. (Before it was stored in my mom's basement, but since we have our own garage now, we got all our stuff out of her house and brought it to ours). Simon LOVES this thing. He'll scoot along the floor playing with it, or he'll cradle one of the cars in his arms like a baby and will gently spin the wheels. It's not just this train that he's obsessed with, though. He loves anything with wheels. Cars, trucks, toy airplanes, you name it. In fact, for the last several nights, before we sit down to read our bedtime stories, he insists on choosing a car that he can then take to bed with him.The next thing Simon is obsessed with right now is yogurt. Normally, Simon is a pretty good eater. He'll just eat whatever everyone else is having for a meal or snack. He's not very picky. But lately it seems like all he wants to eat is yogurt. Once he has some, then he'll eat other things. He also insists on eating the yogurt unassisted, which means a lot of it ends up on the front of his shirt most of the time. But how can you say no to that face?

Domino Rally

Joey is obsessed with Dominoes lately. He received a set for Christmas from my mom's next door neighbors. He doesn't really want to play a game on dominoes. What he wants to do is set them up in a pattern to be knocked down. Joey has even done research on the internet, looking up various "domino rallies" to see new and interesting ways to set up dominoes. How's that for a unique hobby?

Chinese New Year

Since the kids' school has a Mandarin Chinese language program, they encourage the kids to learn about Chinese culture. So they had a big celebration for Chinese New Year. It was a really fun evening at the school. Here's Kristin in front of one of the displays. The artwork in the back was all made by the students.They had Chinese food and games, and Chinese music playing. They had classes on how to make paper lanterns. They also had a performance with a Chinese dragon! They also had face painting, which is always a hit with the kids. Most people got their Chinese zodiac animal on their face. Kristin was born in the year of the monkey, but she asked that they paint a snake instead. Go figure.They also had a group from the Confucius Institute there to write the kids' names in Chinese characters. They'd break your name into syllables and then write the Chinese character for that sound. It was interesting to see what meaning your name took on by writing it out this way.
Kristin's name translated to "beautiful" and Joey's meant "hero." They were both pleased.At the end of the celebration, the students all sang the Chinese Moon Song. Happy New Year, everyone!

Happy 9th Birthday, Joey!

After spending the morning at the Science Center, we all went back to our house for a family dinner and birthday party to celebrate Joey turning 9 years old!Joey got lots of great presents. I think the big hit was this digital camera from Aunt Wendy and Uncle Sean. The look on his face in this photo says it all. He was SO excited!When we'd asked Joey what kind of cake he wanted, he was very specific. He even drew us a picture with a cross-section diagram. He wanted and ice cream cake with chocolate cake with chocolate chip ice cream. And he wanted the icing to look like a map of the world. It was a tall order, but I think he was pleased with the results:We normally don't let Simon have sweets, but since it was a special occasion, we have him a tiny sliver of cake. Simon devoured it, smeared icing all over the place, and eventually not only licked his plate clean, but then tried to eat the plate! Let this next photo be a warning to you: a sugar buzz isn't always pretty.