We had a great, but unusual Easter this year. Every year, except the year Hannah was born, we go to Phoenix. Andy's parents were out of town for Easter this year, so we stayed home. As much as we missed heading to our favorite vacation spot, it actually worked out really well because Easter happened to be on my mom's birthday. So, for the first time in my 11 years as a married woman, I hosted a holiday meal! It was long overdue, but what can I say, I'm wonderfully spoiled by my mom and mother-in-law!!

As usual Ellie was up first in the morning. The night before I told her that when the green light went on, she would get some presents from the Easter Bunny. She was pretty pumped to see her basket in the morning.

She immediately put on her new Strawberry Shortcake flip flops,

loved on her stuffed Easter Bunny, 

and read her new Dora book.

After she looked through everything she said, "Show Daddy presents!"

So Andy got an early wake up call, but when your wake up call is this cute, you don't really mind that much.

The other kids were up a little later and raced into our room with their baskets to go through their loot.

Then they were ready to go find some eggs!

Ellie was thrilled to find that the eggs were stuffed with candy.

Andy is cracking up here because he kept trying to tell her she could only have one more piece, but she never stopped shoving the candy into her mouth.

Easter dresses!

More on Easter dinner coming up next...

One of the Adventure Guides trips this year was to spend the night on the USS Midway, an aircraft carrier down in San Diego. It turns out that it was the same weekend Andy was going to be in Phoenix for his annual March Madness trip. Joey's friend Colton also does Adventure Guides along with his two brothers. His dad Randy, who also happens to be Joey's baseball coach, invited Joey to go along with them. It was so sweet of Randy to include Joey. He had so much fun! The boys got to take a tour of the ship, check out the jets, ride a flight simulator, and sleep in the sailor's bunks.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, this is going to be a very wordy post as I've been a lame brain and haven't brought my camera anywhere this week. And, no, my cell phone isn't fancy enough to take blog worthy pictures.

We are at the end of spring break right now and we've had such a fun week. During the school year, Joey sometimes asks if he can have a friend come over after school. Unfortunately that doesn't really work well because of the girl's nap time in the afternoon. So for spring break I decided to try to plan some play dates.

We had Josh, one of Joey's good friends from school over on Monday along with his older brother Chad (their parents are both teachers in different districts with different spring breaks). The boys played outside in the neighborhood, played video games and then we went to a nearby park. We invited Hannah's friend, Chloe from next door to go to the park with us since her mom is in the throes of morning sickness and could use the break. It's times like these when I'm so thankful for our Honda Pilot since it seats six kids perfectly!

Tuesday I had Bible study, so Joey tagged along with us and played video games in the corner, which he loves. Chloe came along with us to Bible study too so Hannah was thrilled.

Wednesday Joey had his friend, Logan over. It was supposed to rain, so I thought it would be fun to take the kids to Playwerx, an indoor play place. It's a little pricey so we haven't gone in a few years, but it's a fun special treat. Of course, the weather turned out to be just fine, but I'm still glad we went. Chloe, our constant companion for the week, came along as well. The kids had a great time and were all tired and sweaty by the end.

On Thursday we didn't have a play date scheduled, but I wanted to try out this new park that I had heard about. I mentioned it to Logan's mom to see if she wanted us to take Logan with us again, but she had plans with some other moms already so they all decided to meet us there. Chloe had other plans for the day, so we invited our other neighbor, Riley to join us.

Thursday night, two of my neighbor friends and I went to Souplantation for dinner while the three dads stayed home with all of the kids. They ordered pizza and hung out while we had a girl's night. It was a win-win, and the moms, at least, can't wait to do it again!

On Friday I thought it would be fun to invite a bunch of kids from the neighborhood to come over and watch Turbo in the morning. When I told Joey my plan when he woke up I thought he would be pumped, but he said, "We've had SOOOO much fun this week that I was kind of hoping we could just take it easy today and hang out." I told him that we didn't have to do the movie, but I wasn't planning on starting it until 10:00. Once he heard that he could have a couple of hours of down time before the movie, he was all excited about the idea. So I sent out a bunch of texts and we ended up having eleven kids come over. I put out some pretzels, popcorn, and water and it was our first ever "Movie Morning." Since it was at my house, I did actually manage to get a picture of some of the kids:

The 2 year-olds surprisingly made it through a whole hour of the movie before they decided to play with their dolls.

We have absolutely nothing planned for the weekend (except for a date night for me and Andy on Saturday night), so we'll have a couple of days to recover from our fun-filled spring break!

On our last road trip to Phoenix, while driving through a smelly, agricultural area...
Ellie: Stinky! Hannah poop.



At Hannah's 5 year well check...
Hannah: Dr. Ambo laughs a lot.
Me: Yeah, he's really nice.
Hannah: Can you marry him?
Me: Me? No, I'm already married to Daddy.
Hannah: No, I mean can I marry him when I grow up?
(Andy thinks we may need to change pediatricians. ;-)



While I was making scrambled eggs for breakfast...
Joey: So I think I get it, when a chicken has a husband we don't eat the eggs, but if a chicken doesn't have a husband then we can eat those eggs.



After being home with the stomach bug for four days...
Hannah: I almost forget what my friends look like.



Andy brought home some cupcakes from work...
Me: Ellie, here's your cupcake!
Ellie: I'm three!

We've had a crazy, but fun month so far. It actually started on the last day in February when we drove about an hour north to meet up with our friends, the Schempers, who moved to Iowa a couple of years ago. Tami's sister just had her first baby so Tami and Mollie came out for the baby shower. We were so glad we got a chance to hang out with them even if it was only for a couple of hours.

 

Now that Joey and Mollie are getting older, I keep waiting for them to get a little awkward around each other, but they still have so much fun together. It's very sweet.

That same night we drove to Phoenix for the weekend. Andy's two aunts and grandpa were visiting from the east coast and we wanted to get to see them.

Ellie hadn't met her great-grandpa before, so that was very special. The kids were so sad to only have two days in Phoenix, but we had to get back for the rest of our busy week:

-On Monday morning the girls and I went to Miss Margie's house for a visit.

-Monday night I really needed to take Joey out to the store so that he could get a present for Hannah. As a cover we decided to do a date night, so Andy took out the girls and Joey and I were able to complete our secret mission.

-Tuesday morning we went to Bible study as usual.

-Wednesday we went to Disneyland!

-Thursday was spent cleaning and getting ready for Hannah's birthday weekend.

-Thursday night we took Hannah out to pick out her present (she decided to go to the Disney Store again like last year), and then she picked Chick-fil-A for her birthday dinner.

-Friday I went to Joey's school for his Literature Parade and to help out in the classroom.

-Friday night Andy and Joey had baseball practice and then Andy's parents got to our house in time for us all to have dinner together.

-After that jam-packed week, we had Hannah's birthday weekend.

This past week was still pretty packed with Hannah's five year-old check up (and four shots!), a playdate with friends, a trip to the Wild Animal Park, I got a wisdom tooth extracted on Friday, and Andy and I went to a two hour timeshare presentation on Saturday morning so that we could get a $100 gift card to Legoland. Whew!

After all this excitement and activity, I was definitely looking forward to a slower week this week. Now it looks like we might be forced to have a slower week as Hannah got a stomach bug on Saturday afternoon. It's almost been 24 hours, and the poor thing is pretty miserable, so I'm hoping she feels better soon. It's weird because it's exactly a year and a week after she last got sick. Hopefully it doesn't spread to the rest of us like last time!

On Saturday our sweet Hannah Belle turned 5!

We started the morning, as usual, with birthday donuts. Then Hannah had to share her special day with Joey as he had not one, but two games:

It was Joey's last basketball game...

and his first baseball game.

Notice the handsome third base coach!

Once Joey's games were over and the girls had naps, it was party time. Hannah wanted a Strawberry Shortcake party this year, and she decided to dress the part. Andy made this adorable cake topper using her picture from Halloween.

Andy's parents, my parents, and my brother were all there for her party. My brother got these great shots of Hannah opening her presents.

This girl has the best faces opening presents.

We just love this sweetie.

 

On Wednesday we went to Disneyland for Hannah's fifth birthday. We went when Joey turned five and decided to make it a family tradition. Since Ellie is so young and wouldn't remember the trip anyway, we left her with my parents. We were all looking forward to riding the real rides at Disneyland and not just hanging out in Fantasyland for most of the day.

We started with the princesses of course. Goodness, those girls are sweet...

Hannah's favorite princess!

After the princesses, our plan was to just hit every ride we could. Our first ride of the day was the Matterhorn. Both kids really liked it--even Joey, who is not much of a roller coaster lover.

Hannah, who pretty much loves all rides, really wanted to go on the tea cups. Joey and I, who don't like spinning that much sat that one out.

Awww, father daughter sweetness.

We saw Mary Poppins and Bert walking by, and Hannah was excited. Mary Poppins is one of her favorite movies.

Autopia was definitely high on the "to-ride" list for both kids. 

Joey was very pumped to get to ride Dumbo by himself. Andy was very pumped to take a break from spinning rides!

All four of us went on Space Mountain. I was a little worried about Joey, but he absolutely loved it! Apparently he is now, officially a roller coaster lover. Funny enough, Hannah wasn't a big fan of Space Mountain so the four of us split up for a while. Joey and I went on Space Mountain two more times while Andy and Hannah watched Captain EO and went on Autopia again.

We ended up spending a lot of time in Tomorrowland (Star Tours was another favorite of all of ours, and we went on it three times), but also made it over to Pirates of the Carribbean, the Haunted Mansion, and Tom Sawyer's island.

We also made sure to go on the Indiana Jones ride.

Then it was time for the parade which was one of the highlights (for the girls, at least). Hannah and Joey were in the front row sitting on the curb, and a couple of the characters saw Hannah's birthday button and said Happy Birthday to her from the parade. In this picture you can see Cinderella wishing her a Happy Birthday. It was pretty special.

What a fun day! We wanted to do as much as possible so we literally never stopped going all day until the parade. We just ate lunch/snacks here and there while we were waiting in line for the different rides. It worked out well, because while we were exhausted by the end of the day, we did everything we wanted to do. Now I'm looking forward to when Ellie turns five! ;-)