We had such a busy Easter season leading up to the holiday since we were involved in our church's ALIVE drama that I was a little worried the day of was going to be hectic as well. The play we were in had a performance Friday evening and 2 on Saturday, so we were at church all day Saturday which didn't leave me with a whole lot of time to prepare the things we were supposed to bring to our family get together's, prepare our church clothes, and stuff the girls Easter baskets. Not to mention try to keep our house somewhat in order from all of our running around.

Mark and I were up late Saturday night after we got home getting everything together. I did indulge in some late night brownie batter spoon licking to help keep me energized. : ) I planned to get up early the next morning too so I could shower and get myself ready for church before we did breakfast and Easter baskets. Usually Sunday morning breakfasts are quick and easy, but on special occasions I like to make time to eat a fun, memorable breakfast. (These came out of a can, so memorable can still be easy!)



Anyways, I snoozed my alarm clock and woke up an hour later than planned! Ugh! I'm really thankful God got a hold me of me in the shower in the middle of my grogginess, and changed my pouting about the morning being off to a bad start to remembering the importance of the day. A less than stellar house, or breakfast, or even time to do my hair just right {cause you know, Easter pictures!} was absolutely NOT what we were celebrating today. Thank you Jesus for that grace that kicked me in the pants!  I let go of some things, prepared my heart to worship a RISEN king and enjoyed my little family. We even had time to do a surprise Easter Egg hunt that one of our neighbors left in our yard the night before for the girls!



I've said it before and I'll say it every year, Easter Sunday at church is my favorite. The excited celebration is something I wish I could carry every week of the year. We celebrated at church with family, spent lunch and the early afternoon at my parents house and then went to Mark's parents that evening. We colored eggs, did an Easter egg hunt for the girls {and one for the adults with a few $20 bills hidden around! Thanks mom and dad!} and shared delicious food.


That night when we got home we finished our Holy Week readings and calendar with Reaghan. I'm so glad we did this with her this year. She retained so much information about the weeks events and even still will hear songs on the radio like "Come to the Table" and will tell me... "Mom! this is the song about Jesus when he washed his disciples feet and said 'this is my body' and 'this is my blood!'" I'm always amazed at how much she actually remembers! It's motivation for me to keep feeding her growing mind and spirit and conviction to keep me praying for the wisdom and grace to show my girls their need for a Savior and their mom's need for Him too. The weight of that feels heavy sometimes, I'm so afraid I'll mess it up! But that's kind of the thing isn't it? It's not all on me and His strength is made perfect in my weaknesses thanks to the cross! Thanks to the resurrection! Happy Easter!

Happy Palm Sunday! We are having a lot of fun this Easter season so far! Our church is putting on an Easter drama portraying the ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus and we are participating as a family. Mark is playing the drums for the live band and the girls and I are participating in the crowd scenes.

In the recent months God has pressed upon my heart to begin preparing for conversations about salvation with Reaghan. She is only 3 and I know her understanding of sin and salvation are limited, but even so, I've been looking for resources and tips on explaining salvation to her. I am so glad that God began preparing me before I knew why! He knew what was coming in Reaghan's heart because she has expressed a lot of questions and thoughts the last several weeks since we've been practicing for the play... "Why is Jesus on the cross?" "Why are they hurting him?" "That makes me sad." "I wish he was okay." "How will Jesus come out of the tomb if the rock is there?"  These have lead to sweet discussions introducing my girl to the concept of Salvation through Jesus' death and resurrection.

To keep her thoughts turned towards Jesus this week we decided to add something interactive during our nightly bible reading. We usually read out of the Jesus Storybook bible during our morning "school" routine and another children's bible in the evenings, but I found a Holy Week reading schedule using the Jesus Storybook Bible from Erin over at Home with the Boys so we are going to use that for our nightly family bible readings this week. We made a Holy Week calendar to go with it so after each reading Reaghan can glue paper cut outs or draw a picture that corresponds with the event in the story. I'm totally being lazy right now and just snapped a picture of it while sitting on the couch writing this post, but here it as after our first reading tonight! (I found the original inspiration here from pinterest... this blogger is longer blogging but her site is still up for reference.)


Reaghan loved it and is anticipating how we will fill each square. I love that when I showed her the biggest square for Easter and asked her if she remembered what happened on that day she answered, "That's when Jesus comes alive again!" We are going to keep it on our fireplace this week so it is front and center!

I have a lot of Easter Printables saved on my Pinterest Board for Reaghan to color and complete this week during our school hour to help build her anticipation for Easter. I love using Pinterest as a resource for these types of things! I really want to cultivate a spirit of excitement for Easter in our home that is similar to that at Christmas time!

How do you celebrate Holy Week? I'd love more ideas!

When Lilly woke up on her birthday mommy, daddy and big sissy all went in to her bedroom together to get her singing Happy Birthday. I'm so glad we got it on video because she was not impressed with our morning singing voices! It was sad and hilarious all at the same time. Thankfully a special treat of Mickey Mouse waffles cheered her right up.

We decided to do something a little different than we've done before and take a fun trip for Lilly's 1st birthday just the 4 of us. We haven't taken very many trips or vacations just the 4 of us, usually we are joining other family members for some sort of family fun trip, so we were really looking forward to doing something just the 4 of us and decided to go to Great Wolf Lodge for 2 days. : )

Unfortunately it didn't really turn out the way we were thinking!

The night before we were supposed to leave I went out to eat to iHop after work with some friends. When I told Mark that's where we were going he made gagging faces and told me iHop was gross and he can't bring himself to eat there. I laughed, rolled my eyes at him and still went and had a fun time. I got home late, into bed around 1 a.m. and by 2 I was back up and in the bathroom... Where I spent the rest of the night. In the morning I was feeling still feeling queasy but much better than the night before. We had planned to leave around 10 a.m. but decided to wait a little while and see if I continued to improve. At this point I was sure I was feeling bad because of something I ate the night before, especially since Mark put it in my head before even going that I could get something bad. Since I was feeling a little better we still went!




We checked into the Lodge, took the girls to the Water Park for about an hour, until it was time for dinner, and had a great time! The girls loved it.



We went and got dinner, I was actually pretty hungry by that time and even though I wasn't feeling 100% I was MUCH better than that morning. We came home and got the girls bathed and into their jammies and did the fun evening activities that Great Wolf Lodge has for the kids. They did a little craft in the craft room...


Went to a PJ story time in front of the their big fire place and then we stopped for a fun snack on the way back to our room.



We had a fun Kid's Suite with a little nook room that looks like a log cabin with bunk beds and its own TV. Reaghan thought it was awesome that she had her own "room" in our hotel room. We went to bed looking forward to a fun filled day at the Water Park the next day... but apparently I didn't just have food poisoning...

In the wee, dark hours of the morning Reaghan woke up crying about her belly hurting and sure enough she got sick. *face palm* This of course woke Lilly up. I think I was in denial about the fact that this was an actual sickness infiltrating my family so I just brought the girls back to our bed and we squeezed in a few more hours of sleep cuddled up all together (a silver lining) until Reaghan woke up sick again. At that point I knew our little trip was over so once Reaghan was settled Mark went to grab something quick for breakfast for him and I from the Lodges little cafe so we could start packing up. While he was gone Reaghan needed the bathroom again and I somehow cut the top of my foot on a carpet tack while I helped hold Reaghan's hair back at the toilet and simultaneously tried to keep Lilly from toddling in.

When Mark came back he told me that he was actually starting to feel sick too and within minutes he was needing the bathroom. You guys. It wasn't good. I knew we needed to get out of there, but how in the world were were supposed to drive an hour home with a sick toddler and the other adult that could either drive or help the toddler was sick too?! I'm not sure how we did it but I managed to get the bags out and then get my sick family out the "back door" to the van before going back in the check out. I made sure to tell the staff about the sickness so hopefully they took the proper steps to sanitize and protect themselves while cleaning the room for future guests.

Praise God that neither Mark or Reaghan actually got sick on the drive home. It was seriously an answered prayer because once we got home it was a different story. I had to try to hold back the tears of disappointment as I drove my family home. We had been looking forward to this weekend for several weeks. I couldn't wait to create some fun memories with my husband and our sweet girls for Lilly's birthday and I was so upset that it had turned in to this. I was mad that I misinterpreted my own symptoms because I so desperately didn't want to cancel our weekend.  I felt so guilty that I may have exposed so many people to our germs during our short stay at the Lodge. I just knew the next big news story was going to be about a stomach bug outbreak at Great Wolf Lodge! I felt horrible.

Thankfully Mark and Reaghan's sickness only lasted 24 hours as mine did and we were all much better by the end of the weekend. I spent several hours disinfecting every surface and bedding in our house and thankfully Lilly made it through unscathed and we spent the day following the sickness, her actual birthday, together at home and made it out of the house for a quiet family dinner.

The trip didn't produce the memories that we thought we were going to make, but it was definitely memorable! And thanks to that silly carpet tack that cut the top of my foot, we got a free night stay to go back another time. ; )

Sibling Love
Reaghan has started going in to her room to play and shutting the door so Lilly won't come in and mess up what she's trying to play with. haha We are having lots of talks about how Lilly is still learning how to play and how to correct Lilly in love... so she has to ask mommy first, but sometimes I'll let her play in there by herself without worrying about Lilly. On the flip side! I've been able to put them BOTH in her room and shut the door to play together for a few minutes if I need to do my hair/make up or talk on the phone quickly without interruptions. Reaghan continues to be a wonderful big sissy and big helper and sometimes I have to remember that she is only 3 and I can't actually depend on her to "watch" Lilly! 

Special Events/Outings
We took a family trip to Great Wolf Lodge for her birthday but unfortunately it was cut short because of the stomach bug we caught!! We got to enjoy one night there and about an hour at the water park. Her and Reag really enjoyed playing in the water!


No more monthly updates or formal documentation of all of her milestones! She was pretty much over sitting still for these photo shoots anyways! Most of her pictures will likely be action shots from here on out ; ) 

We didn't do a gender reveal party when we found out the sex of Reaghan. We just did it the "new" old fashioned way by having the ultrasound technician tell us right there during the ultrasound if our baby was a boy or a girl and then told our families in a cute way... balloons for my family and a cake for Mark's family. With Lilly my mother and sister-in-law really wanted to throw us a Gender Reveal party so we agreed and it was actually really fun to find out all together. My sister-in-law had Party City put the pink balloons in a box so no one at the party knew the gender until we opened it and it was an exciting way to find out with everyone.

So when my sister Erin finally got pregnant through IVF after 7 long years of infertility, I knew I wanted to throw her every type of baby related party possible to celebrate every step of the pregnancy!

ACTUALLY, I decided I would throw them this party as soon as they decided they were going to go through the IVF process. Before they even knew they were pregnant I found a "Baseball or Bows" banner for sale on facebook yardsale. I decided to buy it in an act of faith that they would be able to conceive, and praise the Lord they did! I am so thankful for the Lord's faithfulness and graciousness to answer our prayers that has nothing to do with my feeble acts of faith.

The baseball theme was an easy choice because Erin's husband, Adam, played baseball all through high school and college and is currently a youth baseball coach. My sister Sara and I planned a whole baseball themed party and had so much fun decorating and putting it all together that I had to share some pictures from the party!










































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