Iris the Gymnast

Iris's Christmas present from her Mommy & Daddy was gymnastics classes.  So all Semester, 2 days a week (except during kidney stone season) she's been taking gymnastics at a local college.  This culminated in her performing in a gymnastics show last Sunday afternoon.  Even though she was VERY(and I mean VERY) nervous about performing, she did an EXCELLENT job.  However, you won't see pics of her performance due to our poor seating and the fact that I took video the whole time.  BUT, without further ado...here are some pics from her classes!

I was really proud of how well she listened to her teacher.  I was really kind of taken aback by her dedication.  It was weird to see her not joking around and playing, but always being ready for the next task.  It was just really neat watching her work so hard!

But she says she's switching to rock climbing now ;)

Resurrection Weekend @ Grandad & Grandmom's

I FORGOT MY CAMERA!!  The "few" (it only seems like "few" to ME, I'm sure) pictures I have, I took on my sister's camera.

We got to Grandad & Grandmom's house Friday evening.  Our heat had been out for a month, and that was not a problem, because we had been just using space heaters.  With Stephen working at home and me homeschooling, generally someone was at home running a heater most of the time.  We made efficient use of the space heaters by relocating all residents of our home, including the pets, into one room in the basement for the month of March.

Well, this posed a dilemma all of a sudden.  The night time temps were supposed to be quite cold while we were gone.  Would the pets survive. 

Janet is NOT an animal person.  But she and Dad graciously allowed us to bring our pets to their home for the weekend. 

Sherry picks the kids up so Stephen and I could pack all of our STUFF and PETS into our car.  We arrived at my dad's with 2 ferrets, 4 hermit crabs, 1 beta, an ant farm and a stink bug.  Stephen and I pull into the driveway and all of a sudden we're thinking....do we tell Janet about the ants and stinkbug?  Not trying to be dishonest, but will she get the heebyjeebies and be nervous??  This lady takes disliking insects to a whole new level! 

So we just gingerly carry them in and place them by Dad's woodstove...we figured she didn't walk back into that area much.  We were wrong.  :)  Oh well....she didn't seem to heebyjeebyish!

Dyan got there late Friday night, so the kids had the pleasure of waking up to see her Saturday morning.

Saturday afternoon we had an egg hunt.  Janet plans a really cool one every year.

The hunters in my annual jump-over-the-creek-to-get-to-the-eggs picture...
2013

 2012

 2011

Hunting...

The hiders...

Once they were down to the last few eggs, Stephen, in his characteristic manner, led an organized search&rescue  formation...

Janet also planned a greeting picture that said "Happy Easter, Bobby!" for my step-brother.  Then she simply changed the "y" in Bobby to an "i" and made it "Happy Easter, Bobbi!" for my mother-in-law.  :)

I like this picture of Grandad and Iris.  Whatever was playing on the telly...while it lulled Grandad to sleep, it obviously mildly terrified Iris!

We all went to church with Dad and Janet.  Dad, Janet, Dyan and I played a good bit of the worship music celebrating Christ's Resurrection.  It was really neat!


Here are the kiddos in their Easter outfits once we got back to the house...

Stephen and I...

He is Risen!!

Homeschool Egg Hunt

I knew we wouldn't be able to go to our church egg hunt this year, so I planned an allergen friendly ;) egg hunt for the homeschoolers in our church family.  It was so fun!  If I was faster and better with a camera...there were just so many sweet opps for pics!!

Before we left, I gave the kids their baskets...I may have gone a little over the top this year....

Lucy with her bunny...she had fallen in love with it at Hobby Lobby one day...

Iris with her bunny (which I would have NEVER picked out for her, being a baby blue puppet!) but she had also seen it and gone smitten  a while back.

Clyde and his bunny.  This boy ADORES his stuffed bunnies like you wouldn't believe...he has treasured all his bunnies he's gotten every year.  He loves this one's "soft, cuddly ears."

Then we went to the hunt!  I SO wish we had gotten a group picture!!  There were at LEAST nine families represented there!!  I was thrilled with the turn out and all the kids seemed thrilled as well.  The older kids graciously hid the eggs and the younger hunted :)

Then came examining the treasures.

We had girl egg fillers and boy egg fillers this year and that made it even more fun, instead of the weird stuff I've always used before, we got to do arrowheads, adhesive mustaches, bacon bandaids, venus fly trap seeds, etc for the boys, and embroidery floss, puzzle erasers, fuzzy stickers, slap bracelets, squinkies, etc for the girls.

There was a lot of excited trading among both girls...

and boys....