Molly's Backpack

This cute backpack was given to me when Lucy was born. It became the backpack she took to the gym with snacks in it every MWF when we went there for my class. Since Lucy is in preschool on MWF this year, it's basically become Molly's backpack and she loves to use it! We still bring it to the gym with her snacks and we take it to dance class with her ballet shoes in it. She also loves to play with it at home and pretends that it's the backpack she takes to preschool with her. Most days when I get it ready for the gym, I can't find it hanging up in its usual place. I've learned to look for it in the play room or living room and find it there because she has been playing with it. And, it always give me a chuckle when I open it to find what she's taken to school. :) I love Molly's imagination!

Family Pictures

Lucy had her five-year pictures taken a few weeks ago and I decided to have family pictures taken along with her. We went to JC Penney's for the pictures, where I've been countless times over the last five years for family and kid pictures. JCP calls themselves "professional," and although that's not the word I would use to describe them, I get what I want for a cheap price. :) I'm very happy with these pictures and think that we all coordinated very well!

8 Years!

Happy 8 years to me and Ross on the 17th! Our anniversary day was just a normal day, but it was fun to think back about what we were doing all throughout the day on 4/17/10! I absolutely loved our wedding day. Everything about it was so perfect and so much fun. I wish I could go back and live in it every now and then. This video of me right before walking down the aisle came up on my Facebook memories this week and I love it!

Ross surprised me on our anniversary with a Starbucks frappuchino, one of my favorites, waiting for me in the fridge that morning, and he gave me a bracelet, too. He bought me a bracelet on the last night of our honeymoon and I told him that he should get me a bracelet from then on each year for our anniversary. I think we've forgotten about it for a few years, so it was fun to bring it back this year!

The girls were really excited about our anniversary and each made us cards. :) We received some very nice cards in the mail from family, but I especially loved the hand-written message from my Gramma Ward in her card! I also tried to put on my wedding dress again because Lucy was asking about it. I was happy to still get it on, but I wasn't able to zip it up all the way. Maybe for #9 I can do that. :)

Family Room Dance Party

The girls, especially Lucy, love to have dance parties! Yesterday they decided to have a family room dance party and thoroughly enjoyed themselves. You can watch them here!

Green Lemons

Ross, Molly, and I used to eat taquitos for lunch but stopped for a while. We recently rediscovered them and decided to have them one night on a leftovers night. Molly helped Ross get them out of the freezer and was very excited, although I don't know if she was excited for the taquitos or for the "green lemons" on the box. :) You can watch her talk about the green lemons here!

Easter 2018

We had a nice Easter. We celebrated Easter with my family on March 31, which also happened to be my Dad's 67th birthday. My Mom's birthday was March 15, so we celebrated everything together. My sister and her family came to my parent's house and we had a nice time hanging out with having dinner. The kids colored Easter eggs, and the big kids (age 16 and 13) seemed to enjoy it as much as the little kids!

We had an Easter egg hunt outside and Molly thought it was soo funny that one of the eggs had been "hidden" on our van door handle. It was so funny to watch her and listen to her tell everyone about that egg! Cody also hid an egg up in a tree, so he had to climb the tree to get it down for us.

Easter Sunday was a cold day! It went from cloudy and 65 degrees on Saturday to cloudy and about 35 degrees with lots of wind on Sunday! We had a very nice Easter service at church. I just love Easter Sunday. I love singing songs about the resurrection. They are so touching and just seem to come alive with meaning on Easter, the day we remember that Jesus died a brutal death and rose again just for us. Our church had a big cross set up outside the entrance that you could decorate with flowers and then use as a photo backdrop. This was the neatest thing to me. This same cross was used at the Good Friday service where everyone nailed a nail to the cross...symbolic of Jesus dying for our sins. It's such a pretty picture to think about and see....the cross that held all of our sins now decorated with beautiful flowers...beauty from ashes. The decorated cross alone is such beautiful message!

The girls got a few presents in their Easter baskets and then we took pictures as best as you can with a three and four year old and no photographer. :)

Silver Dollar City...ALONE!

I took the girls to Silver Dollar City a few weeks ago ALL BY MYSELF! This is something I've always looked forward to doing with the girls. I was a bit nervous to do this alone with two kids, as it's so much easier when you have a 1:1 parent/child ration instead of 2:1. Case in point...we had just sat down to eat lunch when Molly said she had to go potty. If Ross had been with me, I'd have taken Molly potty while Ross stayed to eat with Lucy. I couldn't leave Lucy alone, so we packed everything up, loaded back into the stroller, and took care of business in the bathroom. It wasn't the most convenient thing to do, but we made it!

It was a beautiful, beautiful spring day, complete with sunshine and a high of about 70 degrees. It also happened to be right in the middle of several area schools' spring breaks, so everyone else had the same idea as I did about going this day. The park was packed! In fact, when we got close to the exit for SDC, the traffic was already backed up. I wanted to cry and seriously considered turning around and going home. But, we didn't. We made it through the traffic and eventually made it inside the park. I brought our double stroller and was a little worried about getting it on and off of the bus/tram because it is just big and awkward, and I also still had to take care of Lucy and Molly at the same time. Thankfully, others around me offered help with my stroller and bag and I graciously accepted.

Once we got inside the park we headed straight for the kiddie area to ride rides. I wanted to cry again when we got back there because I saw how long the lines were for the rides! I don't mind waiting in line and expect to have to wait a little, but these lines looked like they would take forever to get through. It was so disheartening! Ross and I make a point to try and go on days that won't be too busy, so we hadn't been to SDC when it was this busy in a long time. But, once again, the girls were good troopers and waited so patiently in the lines. We had a good time riding their favorite rides...the butterflies, frogs, caterpillars, tea cups, swings, and the carousel.

All in all it was a good day and I'm glad we went. I look forward to taking them many more times this summer, whether alone or with Ross! 

The girls were really excited to ride the bus from the parking lot to the main entrance.

Looking good in our shades!