Playin' in the Rain

These girls had the best time playing in the rain with (and without) their umbrellas! As a mom, sometimes I forget that the small things make them the happiest - but sometimes, like today, I remember :)

Seven months old!

Daphne is 7 months old! And cute as a button :) She was so smiley for these pics!

She is still wearing 6-9 mo clothes. She has started babbling along with her cooing. Still loves to be held!

Daphne has mastered the tripod sit but is not sitting on her own yet. She's getting stronger, though, as we work on it with the Boppy :)

She's started eating more solid foods (2-3 times per day) - bananas are definitely the favorite!

Happy 7 months, baby girl!

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter! We had a fun Easter morning. The kids woke up a little early (6:30) excited about their Easter baskets:

Sweet Daphne did not get up at 6:30, and her basket ended up being opened after church. Happy first Easter, precious girl!

After getting dressed, we went to a new-to-us restaurant for an Easter brunch buffet, then to church. Got a picture of all of us in front of the restaurant, which turned out really well!

In the afternoon, we dyed Easter eggs for the first time. (I had been avoiding this tradition because it had seemed too messy with too little payoff, but somehow the kids found out about it and wanted to do it this year.) It really wasn't messy at all, surprisingly, and the kids enjoyed it a lot!

We incorporate Jesus's resurrection into every facet of our lives, and I'm glad it was nothing new to our kids today. Thankful for God's gift of His Son and of our assurance of Heaven. He is risen, indeed!

Wildlife Center Field Trip

I planned a field trip to a local wildlife center for a group of our homeschool friends this past week. The center is a wild animal hospital that also houses the animals after it rehabilitates them. They are all animals native to the state: snakes, turtles, foxes, woodchucks - even a bald eagle and a bobcat.

It was quite chilly and windy, but we all had a great time!

Watching the red fox:

After we saw all the animals, we sat in the shelter, read a paragraph about raccoons, and made edible racoons from bagels!

We have a great group of homeschool friends! So thankful!

Easter-y Fun

On Palm Sunday every year, our church has the preschool kids process (as in, walk in a processional) in to the service singing and waving palm branches. It's a precious reminder for the start of Holy Week. (Jason took these pictures; I was home with sick Russell.)

Jason took the big girls to Good Shepherd Lutheran yesterday for their Easter event, like we did last year. Paige was brave enough for a photo with the Easter bunny - so cute!

Yesterday, Jason and the kids made a resurrection garden, like the ones we made last year. It's a beautiful visual of Calvary. (The supplies came from the event at Good Shepherd - such a wonderful gift!)

This has little to do with Easter, but this baby girl is so cute and getting cuter by the day! 

"Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!"

Homeschool: Some Corn-y Voting

Since the IL primaries were held on Tuesday, I wanted the kids to do a mini-homeschool unit on voting to familiarize them with the process. They filled out voter registration cards, we read several books about the voting and campaigning process, and I explained a little about why I chose who I voted for in the Republican primary.

Then, the kids cast their ballots...for their favorite way to eat corn! Popcorn, caramel corn, corn on the cob? We polled Facebook also to make it more interesting (and to give them more tallying practice!)

Popcorn won on Facebook, but our family unanimously voted caramel, so we bought special Chicago caramel corn to celebrate!

We also voted in the primary election. The polling place is on our street, and it was a nice day, so we walked! It only took about 5, maaaybe 10, minutes, including the voting. The kids were very good (could it be because I gave them lollipops?)

Fun homeschool day!

AWANA Crazy Hair Night

The kids' AWANA club at our church had a "crazy hair and hat" night a couple of weeks ago, so I ran with it :) It was fun to do something out of the ordinary! All credit goes to Pinterest, as usual for me.

I think the "crazy" of the night got to them!

Meredith's was a rainbow hairstyle; Russell's was a blue wave with a Lego shark stuck in it using hair gel.

Paige had 3 corkscrew bows in the back. Daphne contributed with a cute (not crazy) headband :)

One of the AWANA volunteers took a better pic of Russell's hair:

Pretty Almost-Spring Days

I did not realize it had been so long since I blogged! We've had sickness slowly hitting everyone in our family (AGAIN) and I'm also trying to finish a book I've been reading, and trying to finish our yearly photo book from 2015, so blogging just slipped off my radar.

Anyway...

We've had some beautiful weather in the past few weeks, on and off! I'll definitely take it. This is the third winter we've lived here and it's been by far the mildest (and ironically, it's also the one we decided to snowbird during).

It has snowed off and on since February began, here and there, but it doesn't stick around more than a day or so because of the mild weather - woohoo!

So we've gotten out on our swing set (that the kids are quickly outgrowing!)

Look who loves to swing! First time!

All smiles!

{Don't mind Paige's face - she got in a fight with the stairs to the trampoline}

Welcome spring!