Easter Weekend

We had a fun and relaxing Easter weekend.  Saturday morning we had the 7th annual Easter egg hunt put on by our awesome neighbor Dore.  She started doing this just for Esther and Peter in 2007, and now it has grown to include the other kids on our street as well as some of the grandkids of the neighbors.  It's always a lot of fun and Dore keeps making it bigger and better every year!  This year Esther found the "golden egg" which was worth $5!

Dore the Easter Bunny!

Karen and Juan arrived from Chicago at lunch time, and it was fun hanging out with them for the rest of the day.  We played outside all afternoon.  Then we went to Olga's for supper thanks to money sent from Grandpa and Grandma from Florida!  After Olga's, we checked out Sweet Yo's frozen yogurt, which was right across the street.  Dore had given us a gift certificate a while back, and this was the perfect chance to use it.

This morning Karen and Juan came to church with us and it was a beautiful service of celebration for Easter. Then we all went to Casey's parents' house for Easter dinner.  We had delicious food as always, and then relaxed and played games and hung out for the afternoon.

Special cupcakes made by Grandma!

Casey made Death by Chocolate for dessert.
YUM!!!

Now we're looking forward to a fun-filled week of spring break!

Our week...

It's been a good week here.  On Tuesday Peter lost a front tooth and we made apple smiles:

Peter also made a pigeon hat at school (if you have not read the pigeon books by Mo Willems, you must go to your library and get them)!

On Thursday the kids had a 1:30 dismissal and spring break started!  Esther had piano lessons and since we were driving by Sweet Mellisa's on the way home, we figured eating ice cream would be a good way to kick off spring break!

On Friday morning Peter and Esther got haircuts.

Very exciting.

Yesterday Esther's friend from school (whose parents own SkyZone) gave her 3 passes for a free hour of jumping.  SkyZone is a relatively new thing in Grand Rapids.  It's an indoor trampoline park with a huge area of trampolines, dodgeball and basketball on trampolines, and a foam pit.  Since she got the passes, we decided to use them this afternoon.  It was really fun and a great workout!

We came home and played outside with our neighbors for a couple hours.  It was actually in the 50's and we'll take it after the last few cold and snowy few months we've had.

Fun with chalk!

Peter drew a big NASCAR racetrack.

Then Jimmie Johnson and Denny Hamlin 

had a race on the track.

Tonight after dinner we dyed eggs.  The kids get more creative every year and it is fun to see how they turn out!

Esther's Egypt Project

BY:ESTHER
This is my finished Egypt project. In school we are studying Ancient Egypt and we each had to make an Egypt project. Some kids are doing mummies, one or two are doing Egyptian drawings, one or two are doing chariots, there are a lot of different things kids are doing. But I really wanted to do a diorama of the Nile River. As you can probably see, in the middle we (daddy helped me with it) made the Nile river. We took drywall mud and blue food coloring and mixed it together. We made the three pyramids out of Styrofoam and then spray painted them brown. The yellow is wheat that they grew, and the green string is watermelon vines. The house is made out of clay. I made a little clay boat too but I decided to do that after the picture. Daddy wants you to know that it was made and kept safe in daddy's "Man Cave" :)


This is just a close up of the whole project!

This is a close up of his house!



This is a close up of the wheat and watermelon vines!

A close up of one of the pyramids!

Me with my project!



I also had to make report about my topic. This is it! You can read it too!

GEMS Mother-Daughter Tea

BY:ESTHER
On Wednesday night mommy and I went to a special GEMS night. It was called the mother tea night. We had to get dressed up really fancy. At the beginning Miss Kaitlyn (our main leader) told us a bunch of facts about tea. Then after we had our picture taken and played a game we got to have snack. It was Oreos dipped in dark chocolate with sprinkles. During that each mom and daughter had to take a quiz with the questions about the facts we heard in the beginning plus a bonus question. The question was "Who said this quote?" The quote was "A woman is like a tea bag- you can't tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water."  Can you guess who it was? It was Eleanor Roosevelt. After that we did a craft. It was the bracelet you see in one of the pictures below. At the end they had some prizes to give out. One was for the people that got all the questions right on the quiz. The other was for the best dressed mother-daughter team. Mommy and I got all the questions right on the quiz even the bonus question so we got to pick a prize from the front table. My friend Clara and her mom got them all right too! Mommy and I got the same thing. We got a big box of sweet tart chewy candies. I had a good night, and a fun night too!


I wore my father daughter banquet dress from last year and Mommy wore her dress from Aunt Karen's wedding (Aunt Karen).

 The game we played while waiting for our picture this game. We had to balance marshmallows on a popsicle stick and walk between some chairs!

That was the picture we got taken!

This is me working on my bracelet!

 This was the finished product!

That was the teapot that was on our table!

Mother-Son Date Night!

By Peter:

Today I went to the Kroc Center with mommy.  It was a mother-son date night!  The theme was all sports.  When we got there, I did a little basketball thing.  Then we watched the magic show.  And then we had dinner.  After that, I made a flag that said, "Go Tigers!" with a baseball in the corner.  Then I got my face painted.  I got a Spartan on one cheek for Michigan State and the Michigan State "S" on the other cheek.  Then I got a balloon.  It was a green sword.  And then I did the baseball thing.  It was this blow-up thing where there was this round triangle thing pointing up and they used colored balls and they were floating because of the air blowing out.  And then, I did the golf thing.  While I was doing it, my balloon popped.  Then I got another balloon.  The guy started to make a green sword again, but then the kid behind me asked if the guy could make a light saber and then the guy made me one!  Then I got dessert.  You could have strawberry ice cream or chocolate ice cream.  I had strawberry.  It was super duper good!!!  I did a little bit of sword fighting with my friend Caden and his little brother Evan.  And then we left.

But we didn't go home right away!  :)  Then we went to Schuler's.  I got a Lego fire motorcycle with a recycling dumpster that was on fire.  Then mommy got some coffee and I got some root beer.  And while we drank our drinks, we played checkers on mommy's phone.  I beat her because no matter where she moved, I would be able to jump her.  At the end, I had 2 checkers left and mommy had zero (obviously).  And then we went home and I built my Lego set.  And then I went beddie-bye.

The end of the wonderful date!