Tessa Turns 9 and We Celebrate Easter

Tessa had her 9th birthday on March 24th. It was a low key birthday this year, but we had a fun cake and friends over to help celebrate. I always try to make creative cakes for Tessa, because I wanted to do something special for my "middle child" after Aubrey was born. Unfortunately, after having a total of 4 kids, poor Aubrey is the one left out on almost everything and will probably have the most "middle child" issues. :) Anyway, so Tessa asked for a turtle cake, and I did my best to make her one. I thought it turned out pretty good. She liked it too, so that's a success in my book!

Since we've been reading the Book of Mormon, our treat for finishing the book of Jacob was to eat out at Olive Garden. Luckily, we finished that book right around Tessa's birthday and she allowed us to combine the two by celebrating that accomplishment and her birthday in one shot by eating at Olive Garden on her birthday. They sang to her and she picked out her very own dessert - a caramel flavored mousse. She was still a little embarrassed to be the center of attention, but she at least didn't hide while they were singing this time.

We had the Kasallis family over to help us eat our turtle cake and to watch her open her presents. She got a tricycle race bike which was her biggest and most exciting gift along with a few smaller gifts too. I didn't get any pictures of her gifts, but we did get one with her by her cake before we started eating it. 

Tessa is still our smarty-pants girl. She always has the highest grades and she does well in school and in the GT program. She loves being active still and doing things like tumbling, dancing, riding bikes, or basically anything that lets her move. She has a lot of friends and loves to create clubs with all of them at school and do all kinds of elaborate imagination games and activities with them, which is awesome. She's our happy, easy-go-lucky girl and we love her. I can't believe she's 9, but we're so happy that she is a part of our family. We love you Tessa!

A week after Tessa's birthday, we celebrated Easter. We had a ward activity that included an Easter egg hunt and an auction for a fund raiser for the youth. The girls loved playing at the park and doing the egg hunt. Abby was hanging out with her older friends and a couple minutes before the egg hunt began, she told me she didn't want to participate. I figured it was because it's only for the primary kids and Abby's older friends were too old to participate and she was tagging along with them. Luckily however, some of her younger friends, like our neighbor Claire, talked her into doing it. I was happy because I was also reminded that it was her final year to participate anyway, because she's 11 and next year she'd be too old to participate whether she wanted to or not. 

I was excited to get pictures of each of the age groups as they waited for their turn to hunt eggs. Aubrey and Tessa were in the same age group this year. 

They each got to find 10 eggs and then once all the kids had 10, they were able to go around and find any eggs that were left. We definitely had plenty of candy by the time the night was over. 

The day before Easter, we let the kids dye eggs. It was a bit messy, but we only spilled one cup of dye; so I guess that's pretty good considering we were working with 9 kids. Everyone got to decorate two eggs and they had fun choosing their colors and picking their designs.

I also wanted to add our semi-annual women's conference picture. The past couple years, we started going out for a treat after the broadcast, and this time we picked AJ's Diner. Girls ages 8 and up are invited, so it's a fun mother/daughter activity that the older girls and I get to do together. It's fun to be with other ladies and their daughters from church as well. This was the only picture I took, but these girls had fun making another concoction with their leftover food and shakes, just like they had 6 months ago at our last restaurant outing.

On Easter Sunday, I talked Tyler into letting us take pictures since the girls finally got to wear their new Easter dresses that Grandma and Grandpa Black had bought for them a couple weeks ago. I thought the pictures turned out really pretty. I love having family pictures.

That evening, we had our own egg hunt around the yard, and the Kasallis family joined us. Tyler's family's tradition is to include money in some of the eggs, so the kids are showing off their dollar bills in the second picture. They had a lot of fun finding their own eggs and helping others find the eggs that they couldn't.

I love Easter and all the fun family activities we do together for it, but we were able to also spend a lot of time talking about the true meaning of Easter and how our Savior, Jesus Christ, rose from the tomb and is now alive just like we are. We watched a video of His life and talked about how important His life, atonement, and resurrection are to us. We are so grateful for the gospel we have in our lives and the knowledge we have of our Savior. And we love being able to celebrate that together as a family every Easter season.

Spring Break and Other March Happenings

I wanted to start this post with a few pictures about a block party we had one weekend. It's been a dream of mine ever since we moved onto a cul-de-sac to have a block party and invite all the neighbors. Especially now that we know more than half of the people who live on our street, I've really wanted to do this. One night we kind of had an impromptu block party and BBQ, and it just makes me want to do it even more and really put some planning into the next one. It was so much fun. 

The hardest part was getting good pictures in the dark.

Our Spring Break was pretty low key this year. We stayed home and Tyler worked, but we did have some visitors who made it more fun for the kids. The week before our Spring Break started, Grandma and Grandpa Gibbons came to visit. We had fun eating out with them, going to the school to have lunch with the girls, and just hanging out. We met them at Applebees when they first pulled into town. I took a ton of pictures trying to get the right flash without it being too bright, but this goofy picture was the best one of the bunch.

We picked up some pizzas and spent an entire afternoon at the school one day, so we could eat with all three girls. I didn't think about taking pictures until the last lunch, Abby's. It was a really cute picture though. Taryn was a good sport to sit through all those lunch times too.

I had a Relief Society activity the week that they were visiting, so Marilyn went with me. We were celebrating the Relief Society's birthday and we had a dinner. I took a picture of our entire group. We sat at tables determined by our own birth month, so Marilyn and I didn't even get to sit together, but everyone was very friendly and we had a good time.

We love when family comes to visit and are always sad to see them go.

AJ Kasallis turned 12 right before Spring Break and their family had a dinner party with a bunch of families from church. We caught all the youth at one point to grab a picture and I wanted to include that here. They are a great group of kids and I'm excited for Abby to grow up with them.

Like I said, we mostly hung out at home for Spring Break. The girls played a lot of tablets and phones and other electronics. Abby and Taryn looked so cute together on their phones playing games, that I had to grab a picture.They could barely even spare the time to smile let alone look up for the picture.

We did take one afternoon to go to a park to play. The girls picked the "spiderman park" because of its huge "spider's web" that they can climb. I pulled out my phone to take some pictures so we'd have some account of what we did during Spring Break this year.

You can tell from Taryn's hair that the girls also got to play beauty parlor and they colored their own hair using hair chalk that we have. They entertained themselves pretty well during their week off from school.

The girls had fun making up their own games including a ninja warrior course and using the back of the drums as a hiding place.

During the second half of our Spring Break week, Grandma and Grandpa Black came to visit. We just hung out and did some shopping to get the girls new Easter dresses. The most exciting thing we did together was have an ice cream sundae party because we had finished reading 2nd Nephi and that was our treat for finishing that book. It was yummy and fun to have all the exciting toppings like angel food cake, hot fudge, and of course whipped cream and cherries.

The last thing I wanted to include was a birthday party that we went to at Peter Piper Pizza. It happened a week or so after Spring Break, but it was in March and the girls had lots of fun.

The party was for one of Tessa's school friends, but they let us all play, so Aubrey and Taryn had a blast as well. The cutest thing I saw was at the roller coaster video game where it's only meant for two. However, Tessa and her classmates would squeeze as many kids on as possible so they could all enjoy the ride together. Here's Tessa with three of her friends. It was so funny to watch.

Even though we didn't travel anywhere this Spring Break, we still made our own memories and had fun with family and friends.