Spiritual Uplifts

Even though I wasn't thrilled to have to fast on a Friday, because it meant I would have to either miss my work-out or keep it low, I did look forward to following the prophet and participating in the worldwide fast. It was also a good way to start Easter weekend and think a little more about Good Friday.

My girls were happier to fast than they normally are and they definitely fasted two meals. Even Austin fasted two meals and he doesn't usually fast at all. Erik ate breakfast later, but that was about it. I wouldn't let him fast because his eating habits wouldn't allow him to fast and be at all pleasant to be around. He's been having a hard enough time getting enough to eat lately to keep him functioning as a "normal" 8-year-old boy.

It turned out to be a peaceful day and I even managed to do a little chair Zumba with my friend's virtual class. We colored Easter eggs for about 2 hours. I had bought a space kit and Karissa taught us how to color eggs with rice and with shaving cream, and dye of course.

 The fast was a spiritual experience and we finished it off with take-out pizza, breadsticks, and sushi. We watched Hop and The Cokeville Miracle, an Easter movie and a spiritually uplifting movie.

The Easter Bunny decided to come in the middle of the day on Saturday after looking at the weather forecast for Sunday. Plus, we had nothing else going on Saturday, so why not spread the joy of the Easter festivities? There were 118 eggs hidden in the yard. They wanted it hard, so it was much harder than normal. We actually have two more eggs out there somewhere, unless some critter took off with them, which is very likely. Even more likely, we'll find them next year...

Victoria really wanted to do a decade themed dinner on Saturday. We drew years from a jar. Here are the results:

1920s

1940s

1950s

1970s

1980s

1990s

The kids knew they were going to be able to look for their baskets on Easter after church sometime, so we were all able to sleep in Sunday morning with nothing to rush awake for. I got to sleep in, for me, and even had more than an hour to read, reflect, and enjoy the Easter music on the Church app while everyone else still slept. We had a nice breakfast, an awesome church service that Jason organized, and more spiritual moments partaking of the sacrament in our home and discussing the Easter story.

I really wanted a picture with our homemade masks on. It makes it so much more real!

We obviously didn't have coordinating colors. We were lucky to be in our church clothes!

After our family pictures, the kids found their Easter baskets.

Erik's uninflated "bopper" ball that was in his basket in the basement corner.

Austin's basket in the cleaning supply closet.

He was happy he got the blue one.

Victoria's basket was in the coat closet on the top shelf. She got new sunglasses.

Karissa's was in the basement fridge.

She got a frosting dispenser and candy melts for baking.

I told Jason that I didn't get him much, besides his favorite candy and Dr. Pepper. When I was out shopping for food, I had bought the candy and then some gifts for the kids on a whim, thinking, I better pick them up before I forget!

Jason got me some gifts, though. New kitchen sheers and a new knife! I could cut up the pineapple really well that day!

The boy's boppers

Being dramatic!

We talked to extended family and prepped dinner which consisted of ham, oven-baked potatoes, asparagus, peas, rolls, and deviled eggs, part of which we took to the missionaries for their dinner.

Karissa made a cake, using her new frosting decorator, but it didn't look as good as she would have wanted, so we didn't take a picture, but it tasted fantastic! We had run out of powdered sugar and found a recipe for frosting that didn't call for it, though it was tricky and turned out more runny.

An evening watching church Easter videos together and some games, helped end the day well.

Happy Easter!

Spring

With spring comes General Conference. This one, because of our circumstances, was an unforgettable experience, as predicted by President Nelson last October. Jason and I were supposed to be in Chile, but we ended up being home and listening to all the beautifully written talks that were prepared, mostly, before this pandemic. A few people probably added some things to make it applicable to what we're going through, currently, but for the most part, they were things we needed to hear regardless. I especially loved the Solemn Assembly and President Nelson's reading of the Proclamation of the Restoration. The announcement of the new temples to be built, the worldwide fast for today, and the apostolic blessing for all of us were particularly significant, spiritual highlights.

We enjoyed celebrating my mom's birthday a little early, before she left, with a cake Karissa made. My mom ended up going back a few days early since it's getting so bad here in the Detroit area and she should be with Jim again. Her first flight was canceled, but she ended up getting another one for the evening. She said it was another empty flight with a lot of people cleaning everything around meticulously. Before she left, we enjoyed a hike in a new area, and even took Jason back there 5 days later because we loved it so much!

Usually, Jason doesn't get off over spring break, but Ford made everyone take off this week, so it was nice to be able to go for a hike with him and enjoy a day of absolutely perfect weather! We got a lot of yard work done that day too. It's a good thing we keep an eye on the weather because that beautiful weather was on Wednesday and Tuesday and Thursday were days we needed to mostly be inside due to rain, hail, wind, and even some snow yesterday. We played lots of games inside and Victoria is the Battleship Queen! She beat everyone, some of us a couple of times. Erik did beat her once, but she also beat him more than once. Karissa did a lot of art and completed painting a pair of shoes that she'd been working on for over a week.

Victoria and Karissa worked on this family poster for a while and finally finished it during General Conference.

Karissa's night and day shoes.

Victoria painted the garden plot for us to earn some money. She's taking care of the seedlings in the greenhouse as well. Hopefully, we have a great garden!

We planted this little evergreen that started out as a small sapling that Austin brought home from school a few years ago. His siblings all brought them home whenever they were in that particular grade in school ( I can't remember which grade!), but his is the only one that survived. Lucky Austin!

Karissa painted this just for fun.

We look forward to Easter weekend. It will be a memorable, spiritual time, I'm sure!

Cooking Competition

Victoria had a dream one night about me putting together two boxes of random ingredients and having two groups of my kids have to create a meal out of them, as a competition. It's funny, that night I also fell asleep wondering how I could get her to help in the kitchen more. This was an answer to that thought! I happily obliged her requests to make the dream happen.

Team "Guy"

Team "Silver"

I wanted to just have them make dinner for us that night, so I decided to plan for things that we could actually eat. So I grabbed things to put in each box that went very well together. In one box, I put a box of spaghetti noodles, a jar of pasta sauce, a bag of frozen peas, and a bag of meatballs. The other box I included a bag of frozen stir fry veggies, a jar of broth base, a bag of frozen wontons, and a bunch of green onions.

I worried that it would be too easy for them, since everything just basically needed to be put together, but I didn't need to worry, ha! Luckily, they knew what the ingredients for each meal was meant to be for since those are ingredients for "go-to" meals that I always have on hand. They did wonder why they were so ordinary, but I asked them if they would rather have had peanut butter and oatmeal and other stuff that didn't go together, and they decided that spaghetti and wonton soup with stir fry, were just fine!


Now for the fun part! When Victoria pulled out the green onions, she had no idea what they were!! She kept saying they were asparagus and Austin agreed, then they thought celery, so I actually told them what it was! When they were trying to figure out the broth base, they couldn't decide how much to make and weren't quite connecting the ratio between water and broth base. I gave them a couple of tips. It took them a bit to figure out what pan to cook the stir fry veggies in too. I just had to leave the room so they would stop asking me questions!

Karissa is pretty good in the kitchen, so it worked out well that she was with Erik, since he left her anyhow! She just needed help with which pot to boil the noodles in since the other team was using the pot she would have used.

When they were done, a not too long time later, they called the judges in (my mom, Jason, and I) and had small portions dished up for each of us. We had to judge them on presentation and taste. They were all so proud of their work! Rightly so, because they did a great job and they want make dinner more often! The best part: they didn't ruin any of my pots and clean up was fairly easy!

"What is this???"

Green onion!

Ready for it!

Completed meal! (this actually wasn't the one that we judged the appearance on, so it doesn't look as nice as the ones she served us. She hadn't finished dishing them up when we took pictures of Team Guy's, then we were eating the wonton soup and she brought our meals to us after we were already eating, so pictures weren't on our minds!)

Stir fry and wonton soup  (you can see the nicely chopped green onion in the soup!)