We had a relatively low-key Easter weekend-- that's probably not a shock to anyone. :) Aaron was off on Good Friday, so he and my dad teamed up to take the boys fishing. They took Michael in the morning, leaving around 6:00am. They caught four fish while they were out. Noah and I did some school work and had a nice morning at the house with Avery. The guys arrived home around noon so my dad could head over to the church building for a little while. Having the boys come home at lunch allowed us all to spend time together in the early afternoon. My dad came back around 3:30 to pick up Noah and Aaron for the evening fish. They ended up catching 11 fish. Michael and Avery and I had a relaxing afternoon and evening together. Michael picked dinner for us-- we had leftover frozen pizza and I made blue-box mac-and-cheese and we ate on the deck. Michael and Avery played outside for a while and then we ended our night by watching "Onward." This is a super cute movie that we've probably watched a solid twenty times in the last week. It gives us a break from Frozen 2, so I'm all in. The guys arrived home around 7:30pm and it was nice for both fishing trips to have gone well and to have fish caught during both excursions.
On Saturday, we took it pretty easy in the morning. Aaron and I cleaned out our office last weekend, so this weekend we tackled lots of laundry and clearing out Avery's room. For a while, I kept adding furniture pieces to her room and eventually it became a place where there was hardly any walking space. We might have had two to three square feet to walk around. Last weekend Aaron removed the pack-and-play and we just leapt into having her sleep in her "big girl bed." She actually has done awesome and for some of the nights has actually slept past her normal wake-up time-- probably because she's more comfortable in the big bed. Removing the pack-and-play gave us more room, but it was still crowded. I moved out a smaller piece of furniture this weekend and relocated it to the living room. I tend to stick more with the minimalist approach in my main living areas of the house, but sometimes this makes it look like we're moving since there's so much empty space. So I knew adding a small piece of furniture to the living room wouldn't be terrible. I also rearranged some of the pieces in Avery's room so it didn't look like things were totally crammed in there. Avery's bed doesn't have a headboard or foot board and we had kind of been using two bed rails as a side rail and as a foot board when the bed was on it's frame. However, in the fall we let my mom borrow the bed frame, and she said she'd hang onto it for us until we asked for it back, so we've just had the box spring and mattress on the floor. This means that the bed isn't very raised off the ground, so we didn't really need to have a bed rail at the foot of the bed. We moved that bed rail to the head of the bed because there's an outlet right at one of the pillows and I have a lamp and a diffuser plugged into that outlet and didn't want little two-year-old fingers to find it and play with it. So we transferred the bed rail to the head of the bed to act as a head-board. We kept the side-rail in place to act like the side of the crib and pack-and-play-- since she's used to having some barrier at her side. The room looks so much bigger with just moving the spare piece of furniture and the bed rails!
After this project, we rewarded ourselves with drive-through lunches (Cook-Out for us and McDonald's for the kids-- their choice). We planned to attempt naps after lunch, but Avery took hers while we were in the car, so it kind of defeated the purpose of the rest of us getting to rest. We hung around the house the rest of the day and played outside for a bit. We were told to expect bad weather on Easter, so we started preparing for bad weather by closing up the sand-box and making sure items on the deck were secure.
I bought little Easter treats for the kids several weeks ago at Target and hid them in the garage until Saturday night. I ordered one extra gift for each of them from Amazon, and I really didn't intend for those gifts to come by Easter but they did, so I hid those in the garage too. I don't really have Easter baskets for them, so I just separated out the treats on the couch. Michael got a Pokemon plush toy, Noah got a battery-operated garbage truck that makes noise and has lights, and Avery got some new outfits for her baby doll. All three kids got bubbles, a kite, sunglasses, and a chalk roller with stencils. Overall, it was very simple but very sweet.
On Easter morning,
I woke up and attended our "drive up" Sonrise Service. Aaron & the kids were awake before I left but we figured it would be torture for Avery to see the slide from inside the van and not be able to get out and play on it so Aaron stayed home with them. Our service was well attended- 8 cars.
Afterwards, I came home to a breakfast of "Sister Schubert's sausage rolls" and coffee. We watched our church sermon on Facebook Live at 10:00. I made a lunch of tomato soup & grilled cheese, then we all took naps.
I made homemade brownies in the afternoon and Aaron pressure cooked a whole chicken for dinner. He marinated it in teriyaki sauce and we paired it with rice and peas and carrots. We watched Onward a couple more times. All three kids and Aaron & myself really like it! Later, we read a fantastic Easter book for children called "The Garden, The Curtain & The Cross." It explains the Easter story SO well and the pictures are beautiful.
This Easter sure looks different from the past. We prepared more for severe weather for overnight, so I had the hall bathroom stocked with our helmets, shoes, diabetes supplies, and leather belts to strap the kids to the toilet if necessary (since it's bolted to the floor). We will try to conduct an Easter egg hunt in our own backyard one afternoon this week in between school work at home. I will also attempt to take nice photos of the kids outside. Avery was given some pretty Easter dresses as hand-me-downs, so I'd like to photograph her in them.
We're taking it one day at a time and that's really all anyone can do.
Until Next Time,
Much Love, Reba
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