Resurrection Sunday

Easter this year found us celebrating first with our church family and then with a kick-yer-shoes-off afternoon with Jer's side of the family tree. True to form, the boys ate their weight in candy and we all had some good laughs watching the newbie's try to fall in to line with the well seasoned egg hunters. It was quite a sight. But then again so is a four year old wearing a camo hat who's hopped up on 22 miniature boxes of Nerds. 

New to the party this year was my venturing out into the world of matching shirts. {Hasn't every mother dabbled?!} The boys were not fans and even less so of tucking them in. 

Dolly's Easter dress, though?! Swoon. It was a peach smocked chiffon number, reminiscent of The Great Gatsby and bought by her Grammy. I died a thousand deaths. It's a shame the only pictures that made it were of her wrinkled, dirty faced, and waaaaaaay over leaving her headband in. 

 

 

After lunch and egg hunting, we tried our hand at some family pictures. They are just too precious and HI-LAR-I-OUS not to post. As a disclaimer, I guess it should be said that we have 8 kids, seven and younger. The very fact that they are all dressed and in one place and that someone is not crying or throwing up is reason enough to take a picture. But now add in the fact that we still have our Nana (92 in a few weeks) and we just had to.

Our family was next. It's practically tradition. See here and here. 

But then! THEN came Mimi and Pop's turn. Award winning, in my opinion.

Can you say, "Christmas card?"

And last, I'll leave you with some sweet pictures of Judah Boy swinging the babies. He must have pushed them out there for close to a half hour. Bless his heart.

Phone Photo Unload-Christmas Style

Just a taste of our holiday...

Easter Sunday

Our family had an absolutely wonderful Easter Sunday! One of the nicest I can remember having, in fact! For some odd reason, we were ridiculously organized and prepared for our early morning church breakfast, the time of worship that followed, and the afternoon egg hunt and lunch at Mimi and Pop's. An extremely rare feat these days but certainly not an unwelcome one! The weather was gorgeous and we spent most of the day outside on the back porch playing on the swing, laughing at my niece's knock-knock jokes, and just plain shooting-the breeze.

I must say, Judah's really good at breeze-shootin. Just make sure that belly's full and he'll shoot the day away!

See? More shootin!
The big boys played their hearts out on the slide and in the sand box stopping only for...

...a water break every now and then.
And just when they thought it couldn't get any better, out came the Easter baskets! Despite Mimi's best efforts to hide the candy in the bottom of the basket hoping the fun toys would distract them, they would not be deceived. Those boys can sniff out a piece of candy from miles away. I know. I've seen them do it at the park.

And once those baskets were empty, there was only one right thing to do. Fill em' up! With Easter eggs!

But not without a little coaching first...

...except for Judah, he decided to just shoot some more breeze with Nana.

And last but not least, what spring day could be enjoyed by a little boy without a bug in a jar. Oh man, did A.B. enjoy this honey bee that daddy caught for him. He shook carried his "bee-sh hou-sh" around for most of the day before the poor bee just. stopped.buzzing. Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, right?!

I just wonder if the bee would have said the same thing.

Our 4th

We had a fabulous 4th celebrating with some family friends at their house and then later moving on to our street's block party! The boys had their first dip in the pool, ate hot dogs, chips and watermelon, experienced their first sparklers, and stayed up entirely too late! Aside from not loving the pool and the bigger fireworks, I'd call it a successful evening!