Easter

I went to the doctor today and got diagnosed with Strep Throat, 

so I'm home alone in bed while the rest of the family is out on a busy Wednesday evening doing busy life things. Andrew has soccer practice, Evan has a baseball game. Usually I would be at a YW activity.

I'm equal parts bummed that I am missing out on all of the good stuff in the sunshine, 

and stoked to have some down time in a dead silent house.  

Let's talk about Easter this year. 

In years past, Easter fell on the same week as spring break, so life wasn't so frantic. 

This year, I was literally like: "Ok we have 15 minutes before we need to leave for the soccer game, hurry and color the eggs!"

We even had our fun neighbors over to help color, but it had to happen at a break neck speed: "Ok, lovely, now everyone out the door!"

Saturday morning I cracked the speed-whip on the egg hunt. 

(you'll notice Avery didn't wear an Easter dress to hunt eggs? :(

The egg hunt had to be finished before 8:45 wherein I took Evan to baseball practice. 

And then I was outside all entire day until the sun went down. It went like this:

9:00 Evan baseball, me and Lisa do a track workout.

While we are at baseball, Avery and Andrew participate in a neighborhood egg hunt. 

At 10:30 we head to the soccer fields for Avery's game. The game the night before, we got slaughtered 10-1, 

but Saturday we won 6-0!

At 1:00 we head over to Andrew's field for his first soccer game.

It was really painful to watch. haha.

Straight from soccer we headed to Padden for the first of the year hike around the lake while the dads bike Galbraith. 

This is our fourth! year of the Padden experience. It's so funny how we have changed. 

There used to be babies and strollers involved.

See HERE

and HERE.

This was the first time we walked alll the way around the lake, back to the playground. Usually the dads meet us at the tennis courts.

There was this grassy field along the way full of dandelions and daisies. I gathered everyone up and told them the story of when I was living in Las Vegas and we had fake grass carpet in our tiny cinder block back yard that was surrounded by air conditioners running all day long. 

One day my dog Piper chewed up a yellow toy and there were little bits of debris spread around the fake carpet grass. When I looked out my kitchen window, it almost looked like dandelions, and I liked it. 

I blogged about that HERE.

Bailey made a crown and it reminded us of another spring when we had our first walk around Padden, and she put a wig of moss on her head.

Let me go dig up that picture. Here it is:

(way back in 2017)

After Padden, we were starving. 

We ate dinner at a Mexican restaurant, and my hot plate of burrito swimming in rice and beans has never been more delicious. 

My face and especially forehead were so sunburned from spending the entire day out in the brand new spring sun. It was such a great day. 

The next day: Easter Sunday.

Lisa snapped an Easter family picture. 

Evan was over there to my left refusing to be in the picture. Eye rolllllll

After church, we went on a family drive to see the tulips. 

We only went to one field, so it was a little bit of an abbreviated Tulip Festival for us. 

But we have NO TIME! I'm not sure how to feel about it.

I guess I will just embrace it. It's the new place we are at in our lives.

Especially sitting here alone with my sore throat in the quiet house, I feel sad that I'm not out there, a part of the family things we have going on. 

But next year I think I will take the kids out of school to do a proper Tulip Fest. 

The tulip season is such a time stamp. 

Look how big these kids are. Compare it to our first Tulip Festival HERE.

Actually, do not even go look at that old tulip post. It will kill you. 

Spring Break!

I don't want to say that we cater to Andrew when we pick our theme park vacations, but we basically cater to Andrew when we pick our theme park vacations. 

Hopefully he will be into Harry Potter next year? haha.  

Remember when Andrew was obsessed with Cars? We went to Disneyland. 

Remember when Andrew is obsessed with Lloyd and Ninjago? We went to Legoland. 

This picture is sooo Andrew when he is pensive about things. He bites his fingers and juts out his chin like that and half closes his eyes. 

I would say Legoland is good for littler kids. Our big kids were almost too big, but since they are wimps, they had fun on all the rides. Except the "scary" one I made them go on (it was like Goofy's flight school - not scary at alllll).

Some of the line waits had a place the kids could play with legos while the parents stood in line. That's kind of clever.

See that little girl next to Andrew screaming in fear? They brought her back down and returned her to her mama. 

All the workers and stores had places where you could trade your mini figs. I thought they would be more picky with the fig's completeness, but some of them didn't have hair or arms. Keep scrolling to see what crappy ones we traded for our crappy ones. haha. It's a fun idea though. 

At the end of the day (and sometimes in the morning after exercising) we would go swim. 

Well, the kids would swim - I would sit in the hot tub.

Sometimes there were other adults in the hot tub and Andrew would chatty chat with them until it got awkward. 

The first day at Legoland the kids used the money they earned to buy a Lego set.

Then that night they worked and worked putting it together.

They don't sell mini figs just willy nilly, you know? They package them in a secret wrapper - "what'cha gonna get" style. 

So it's a complete gamble - grab the package and hope it's a good one. 

Well Evan got lucky - he said "I hope it's Emmett!" and I was thinking "oh dear, here we go with the unmet expectations",

and then it WAS EMMETT! Unbelievable. 

Our hotel room had the best view of Coronado island and all the military comings and goings, plus the downtown skyline. 

Day two we spent hanging around some So Cal hot spots. 

We went to see the La Jolla seals. They are so stinky but so funny!

Then we went over to Point Loma to see some tide pools.

The kids had so much fun poking sticks at the critters. 

Andrew would "feed" them with random seaweed. 

Day Three we went back to Legoland and the aquarium.

I was really excited about this dino-coaster, but no one would ride it with me - except Andrew. 

He was so fun to wait in line with; we played I spy.

While we were banking around the turns he got scared: "hold me mommy! hold me!"

This "ride" was so funny. Lord of the Flies.

All the little kids ages 6-13 got in cars and drove around. It was a bit crazy. Andrew had to go on it 3x to finally "get" how to drive a car. 

Kai!

Kai was walking back to his secret area, and Andrew got to hold his hand. 

Here are the mini figs we traded.

Here are some awesome mini figs we got either by chance or they came in our Lego sets.

You wouldn't believe it, but Evan bought another mystery bag and was hoping for Wild Style, and he got WILD STYLE!

Avery got Dean Thomas, I got Hermione!

Pillow fight.

Day four, our flight was at 6pm, so we spent the day exploring a part of downtown and then over the bridge to get ice cream at Coronado. 

Those are Avery's sunglasses and Evan's hat. Thanks kids. 

Yay for spring break!

I wish I could say we are a harmonious bunch while on vacation, but we actually do a lot of fighting. 

The good news is, I don't remember much of the fights, but I do remember the good memories. Hopefully the same is true for the kids.

And, blah, I have to sub alllllll week coming up - 5 days in a row - for the worst 1st grade class. I'm doing it as a huge favor for Mrs. Shapiro.

Currently the entire neighborhood is outside our yard playing capture the flag. There are about 20 kids running and thundering from the front yard to the back yard. 

 It is 8:00 pm, so it's almost time to call it. :(