Such An Eggciting Easter!!!

Okay, I know that was a super lame title, but it really was a very exciting Easter - quite possibly the most exciting one we will ever have!  For the big news, scroll to the bottom.  Otherwise we will start by talking eggs.  And cookies shaped like eggs.  

The kids and I flew to Missouri on the Monday following General Conference.  Spring Break - hooray!  Grandma Allphin was so fun, sacrificing all the stuff she needed to do that week in order to watch the kids for me while I galavanted around town with a realtor.  She even allowed massive messes to occur in the name of decorating cookies and eggs.  (And lego battles and car shows, but those are just a given.) 

 Max was always around doing his thing.

Clay even made it to MO for a long weekend!

I told my mom she looked like Martha Stewart in this one, and I think she was offended.  I meant it in the best possible way.  She is decorating eggs with her grandchildren, looking all done up and polished in her super-awesome kitchen.  We experimented with all kinds of techniques, including everything to do with crayons, rubber bands, and stickers.  What a woman!

Now on to even more important things:  we went to the Kansas City Temple Open House!  Tickets for the tours sold out online within hours of them going on sale for that Saturday, but we were lucky enough to get a tour anyway.  It was actually during VIP tour time, so we promised to not take any of the delicious food or amazing presents if they let us see the temple.  

We were really exciting to take the kids, since this will be our temple when we move.  It was beautiful, of course.  I was surprised that it wasn't a smaller temple, but a good-sized one.  I loved all the murals and paintings - really exquisite.  Max was absolutely awful, but we shouldn't have expected anything less from him in public.  The good news is, he was so enthralled by the chandelier in the celestial room, that he kept quiet for that portion.  Thank heavens.

Our most memorable moments from the tour (besides Max screaming and me getting ushered into the youth waiting room) include seeing the "baptism tree" as the tour guide kept calling it (otherwise known as the baptistry) and learning how they hand-cut patterns into the carpeting by drawing the patterns with marker and cutting it out with scissors.  The tour was a really great experience, and we were so glad to be there!

My brother, Alex, came with us since my parents were giving tours at the same time.  He is an awesome uncle, and the kids love him to death.

After the temple tour, we headed back to the hotel (we stayed in Kansas City overnight) for a swim in the pool.  It was way too cold for me, so I lounged poolside while Clay played with the kids.  Max was hilarious and dangerous at the same time, trying to jump in when Clayton wasn't looking.

Audrey and Luke were like little fish.

Alex kept me company.

Back to eggs!  After a wonderful Easter morning of Sacrament Meeting with my parents and another Sacrament Meeting to see Clay's cousin's daughter's baby blessing, we ate a fantastic dinner and headed out in the glorious weather for an Easter egg hunt!  

The loot.  Yes, Alex participated.

Max searching for a peanut m&m that fell in the rocks.

Grandma sneaking candy from Max's eggs.

I loved seeing my kids following my dad out to inspect the garden.  He was getting them all hyped up to help in his garden this summer.  Luke especially loved helping to cut the asparagus that we ate for Easter dinner.

Things I didn't get a picture of: (1) The baby blessing.  Little Eva is so darling!  (2) Playing with our "cousins".  Clayton's cousin, Rebecca, and her husband, Brad, let the kids and I come play with their kids during the week.  Luke and Jacob as thick as thieves.  They were wonderful hosts, as usual, and they didn't seem to mind talking houses with me the whole time.  (3) Our realtor.  His name is Don Caudle, and he was fantastic.  Of course it is a realtor's job to help you find a house that you like, but he seemed to really take us under his wing and walk us through every little step of the way to buying our first home.  (4) Probably a bunch of other stuff, but that's it for now.

As if that all weren't enough to constitute a great Easter break, we found this beauty and our offer was accepted!  We will close on June 18, and then we will finally own a home!!!  Okay, the bank will technically own it for a while, but you know what I mean.  It has been a long road for us to this point, and it all seems very surreal, but we are beyond excited.  

How's that for an action-packed week!

As a final note, I have to record a quote from Luke.  The week we got back from Missouri, Luke had his friend Sarah come over to play.  I asked her what she did over Spring Break.  She told me she went with her family on a cruise to the Bahamas.  "Wow!" I said.  "That sounds like fun!"  "It was," she said.  Luke burst out with: "That's nothin'.  I flew on two airplanes, and my buddy Alex showed me some magic tricks."  Good thing we didn't spend money on a cruise to the Bahamas.  It looks like our kids are pretty easy to please.

Butterfly House

I took the kids to a butterfly house where they were able to hold tons of butterflies.  It was pretty neat! (The pictures are awful, but it was very humid, I only had my phone, and I was trying simultaneously to keep Max from stepping on every butterfly.)  

Luke's Spring Fling Performance

The Kindergarten classes at Luke's school put on a spring fling performance during the spring open house at the school.  The kids all painted sunflower shirts and sang a bunch of spring songs to the parents.  I wasn't sure how Luke was going to handle it, but he did a FANTASTIC job!  It was really quite a breakthrough for him.  He stood up on the stage proud and tall and sang all the words and did all the actions.  It was so fun to watch.  I forgot our video camera, so I only got some poor quality videos on my phone, but it was really neat to see him up there so brave.  It was definitely worth a babysitter so that Clay and I could both go, and we treated him to ice cream after.  Great job, Luke!

Click on the link to see it.  Luke is on the middle row, far left.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=squywroXDFM

A Few Backyard Shots

I hope everyone else in the country enjoyed the unseasonably warm winter and early spring like we have!  

I don't think anyone likes being outside more than Max.  He's always at the door holding his shoes or begging to go outside.  

The End, But Not the Last - Part 1

For one entire year, our kids have been lucky enough to attend Goldfish Swim School in Birmingham, MI.  When they started last April, they were pretty much scared of the water and didn't even want to put their faces in.  In fact, they even hated taking baths because their faces might get wet.  We knew we had to remedy this, and we heard that Goldfish was the best.  It lived up to all of our expectations and more (which is good, because it cost a pretty penny!).

After 2 lessons, Luke was jumping right in and doggy-paddling - face in and all.  Audrey took a little longer to warm up to the water, but soon she was also getting her face wet.  Before much longer, Luke and Audrey were both taking amazing strides and swimming!  They had nothing but fantastic teachers, and we loved it there.  A year later, Luke can now swim front crawl and back stroke across the pool and back.  Audrey can do both one way across the pool.  They both love cannon balls, diving for sticks at the bottom of the pool, and pretty much everything else involving swimming.  Lucky for us, they also love baths and showers.  :)

In preparation for our upcoming move and to save a little dough, we have ended the lessons.  We will miss them for sure, but hopefully this is just the beginning of a lifetime of swimming!  

After every lesson all the kids always got a balloon.

 Last year we used to go to Five Guys every evening right after lessons.  Once a week burgers and fries turned out to be way more than we could handle (it's no health food, that's for sure), so we hadn't gone in quite a while.  To celebrate our last day of lessons, we had to hit up our old haunt again.  It was fun and Max ended up with another signature ketchup face.