Easter Flowers

I spent some time taking pictures of flowers over the weekend. Lots of dogwood, iris, and wisteria photos are in the slideshow below.

Easter weekend

I have decided that Easter is my favorite holiday. I love having a day to focus on Christ's sacrifice for all and to reflect on and celebrate Christ's resurrection. What a Savior! I also like it because it is more low key--no stress over party prep, no stress over gift giving, no chaos of gift opening to take away from focusing on the reason for the day. I guess that's what happens when you get older; you start to focus on the important.

My parents were visiting, and we kicked off the weekend with decorating Easter cookies. I was hesitant to do that because the kids usually don't express much interest. I'm glad I did it, though, because Madelyn really enjoyed it. On Saturday morning, we went to an egg hunt hosted by friends. On Sunday morning, we all went to the early service at church and enjoyed a (somewhat) late breakfast at IHOP. Then we came home for more egg hunting and relaxation.

Below is a slideshow of our weekend. You can click on the slideshow to see the album.


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Spring Break

We've really been enjoying the beautiful spring weather this week. The weather has been great, and we've been able to spend a lot of time outside during spring break week. Here's a glimpse of our week so far.

Pierce is just happy to be here:





Isabel likes climbing and exploring but gets nervous on playground equipment that has holes in it. She also likes swinging:




Madelyn loves to hang and swing. The kid is strong:









I can still hang for a bit:

We did have a pretty major mishap, though. Isabel, in her exploring way, decided to investigate a mud puddle. The mud was very sticky, and she immediately got stuck; then she lost her balance. To say she was less than impressed was an understatement:Thankfully, we were there with friends who had extra clothes and baby wipes. We used two packages of wipes to get her somewhat clean. I don't think her shoes are recoverable.

Tulips-Pardon the redundancy

I've gone a little crazy with my picture taking. I've taken these pictures of tulips over the last few days and have played around with the editing. Feel free to ignore this post if you dislike tulips.













I've gone equally crazy with dogwoods and wisteria. Stay tuned...

4-16-07

I'm heading up to bed in a few minutes, but I wanted to make this post before I did so. Four years ago today, a very disturbed young man did something so unthinkable that I still have trouble believing it happened. He stormed into Norris Hall on the campus of Virginia Tech and gunned down many of his fellow students and professors. He murdered thirty-two people and injured others before taking his own life. Since that day, I've made a post on the anniversary of the shootings. I've been back to campus a few times since that happened and I always visit the memorial on campus. And I always cry.

Our day has been so busy, but I didn't want to go to bed before recognizing the anniversary on my blog. I found this video and wanted to post it here as it sums up the emotions pretty well.

Cousin sleep over

JD took his annual cousin camping trip last weekend, and my sister-in-law and nieces came up to spend the night. Here are pictures from bedtime:

Success:

Up Dos and Cheese

Guess who weighs more than 20 pounds!

Isabel had her 18 month check-up on Monday, and she has grown! She weighs 21.4 lbs (11th percentile) and is 33 inches long (86th percentile). I do think the nurse measured her a bit on the long side, and for the first time, they weighed her with her clothes and diaper on. I was thankful, though, to not have to answer 20 questions about what she eats and how she sleeps and how active she is. It was a quick, easy trip. NO shots and not another check-up for six months!