As Easter approached, we decided to add some new chalk drawings on our driveway and sidewalk. We found a facebook post that showed a ton of chalk ideas where you can be in the drawings, so Taryn did her own rendition of floating with balloons. She did the entire drawing herself. I found the cute Spring drawing to add my own drawing.
Some of our original sidewalk chalk art was still visible even after some rain, so I used Aubrey’s “world” and added my Easter drawing to her square. I thought it turned out really good. Taryn also did her own Easter drawing.
Abby and Tessa came up with their own Easter drawing too. Abby’s a big fan of fully filling in the chalk which includes rubbing it in the cracks and blowing away the excess, so it’s definitely more time consuming. With the help of most of us, we still ran out of chalk and got too tired to finish, but it still looked good and we got a lot of compliments from people walking on our street.
Easter was good this year. Our Easter baskets were filled with things we could use during quarantine like puzzles, games, and goggles for the swimming pool. We were able to dye eggs and the girls enjoyed using crayons and markers to design their eggs.
After getting dressed up for Easter Sunday, we took the girls outside on our patio to take pictures. Tyler took some pictures with his new camera that he got for Christmas. Here are the individual pictures of the girls on Easter Sunday.
I loved how the light shone through the bushes. My beauties.
Tyler also took some pictures with just the girls and then one with all his girls. I love the trellis that we have on the side of our house. Rose bushes grow up and over it and I love to use if for pictures.
We even set up a timer on my phone so we could get a family picture. Since we had to put the phone on a little table, it’s a little lower of an angle than I would’ve liked, but I still love how it turned out. All the girls look so tall. I’ll probably be passed up in height by all of them eventually. I love my family!
On Easter Sunday, we had a church zoom meeting and our girls were asked to sing a musical number. We had been practicing with four other families to sing the song My Own Sacred Grove in sacrament meeting right before they cancelled church indefinitely. But since our ward music chairperson knew about it, she asked us to sing on the zoom meeting. Since we couldn’t sing with any of the other families, just our girls sang and they were accompanied by a recording of the piano part that my dad had made a week or two before the performance. Another friend from our ward took this picture of her iPad during the girls’ performance, so I was super excited to have it since my phone was playing the piano part and I couldn’t take any pictures. The girls received a lot of compliments via text and Facebook messages, and even a card in the mail. They sang beautifully and it was a great experience to be a part of on Easter Sunday.
April was supposed to be the month for Taryn’s 2nd grade field trip. It was scheduled for April 17th and Taryn had been talking about it for weeks - making sure we didn’t forget the date. When we realized that they wouldn’t be going back to school, missing her field trip was a very big deal for Taryn. She was devastated. So on the day she was supposed to go to a farm and get a pizza lunch, we promised we’d order pizza for dinner and I created a farm atmosphere on our street. I walked around the sidewalks drawing farm animals and then created the entrance of “Natalicio Farms” by our mailboxes, so we could take Taryn on a little trip looking for the farm animals. I lathered her up in sunscreen and made sure she had a hat and a water bottle just like we would’ve done if she’d gone to school for field trip day. I put a sign on our wagon that said Natalicio Farm Tour Bus and we took Taryn for a ride.
We started at the mailboxes and walked around our entire cul-de-sac and looked for 12 different animals. I drew everything from cats and dogs to horses, ducks, cows, and a goat. It was fun coming up with more farm animals and I asked permission from some of the neighbors to draw directly in front of their house. Luckily I know most of our neighbors, so I figured the drawings I did wouldn’t be a problem especially if they knew why I was drawing them. As we took the “tour” around our street, we made a stop at the Kasallis’s house where they brought out their baby bunnies so the girls could even have a break at the petting zoo portion of our farm tour.
It was fun to visit with the Kasallis’s outside when we haven’t seen them in forever. They also gave the kids popsicles to enjoy when they weren’t petting or holding the bunnies. Our girls talked us into letting them have their own bunnies, so these are the bunnies that the girls picked from the baby litters of bunnies. They had to stay with the mom for 7 to 8 weeks, so this was still in the stage where they could go visit the bunnies, but they hadn’t been turned over to our care yet.
While outside and hanging out with the bunnies, Aubrey found a baby praying mantis. She came over and showed me and begged for a picture because she wanted to be able to show it to her science teacher, Mrs. Currey. I thought the picture turned out so good because it’s focused on the praying mantis, but you can see how tiny it is with her hand in the picture. Her teacher was very impressed and even mentioned that she should’ve looked around because apparently when praying mantis’s are born, they are born by the hundreds. We’ll remember that the next time we find one.
Tyler hasn’t been going to work either during the quarantine, so we’ve kept him busy at the house with all kinds of projects. We bought new chicks around Easter time and as they grew in their box inside our house, Tyler worked on an addition to the chicken coop in the backyard. He had the girls help paint the wood pieces, which they thought was the best job ever.
After the chicks were old enough to be outside and once the chicken coop addition was finished, we moved them to their forever home. We hauled the tiny coop that was in our living room to the back door and then each girl carried her chick from there to the new coop. I took a picture of the inside of the new addition once the chicks were inside. We are a little concerned that this white and black one (Aubrey’s chick) is actually a rooster, but we have to wait until it’s fully grown to find out for sure.
Abby was a little nervous to handle her chicken, but she was able to hold it long enough to make it from the back door to the new coop. And here’s a picture of the entire coop. It’s now L-shaped with our full-grown chickens in the back half, and the new “teenager” chickens in the new, painted addition. They are separate structures right now with only chicken wire separating them so they can get used to each other without actually being together. And then supposedly when they’re introduced together, they should be able to get along. We’ll see how that goes when we decide to open it up between the two sections.
A few other activities during the last of April included drawing a life-size game of Chutes and Ladders on our driveway. I was worried that we’d play it once and then be bored with it, but the girls and even my parents and the Kasallis boys played it off and on for a week or more. I took a picture of our family playing together when we first finished drawing it. I believe Aubrey won the first time we played, but everybody had a chance to win with how many times they played. It was fun having it on our driveway. And our big fuzzy dice was perfect for playing the game as we rolled it in a box lid. One of Taryn’s science assignments was to build a diorama of an animal meeting a basic need, so she decided she wanted to show a dolphin eating. She created the underwater diorama using dirt from our backyard and rocks that she painted. She colored and cut out the pieces for the sea turtle and seaweed. She even helped Tyler with the spray paint to paint the box blue. She made the dolphin and goldfish out of playdoh and we cut a slit in the top and attached the dolphin to a paper clip so you could slide the dolphin over to make it look like it was eating the fish. Since it had the motions, we took a video of Taryn talking and showing the dolphin moving to submit it online for her teacher. Her teacher loved it so much, she had Taryn show it during one of their class conferences so Taryn could show it to all of her classmates too. Taryn was very proud of her work and it was a fun project for her to work on.
This was our second attempt at recreating some chalk art where you can be in the picture. Taryn picked out the design from the Facebook post we saw and she recreated it exactly as they showed it on the post. When we brought out the other girls to take a turn with the drawing, we realized that it was too close to the garage for their tall bodies, so they had to change up their poses. Luckily with a balance beam you can. Taryn didn’t want to change into a gymnast outfit, but Tessa went all out for her picture.
Aubrey was good wearing a gymnast outfit too, and she decided on this pose for the balance beam. A week later, Tessa decided to do her own chalk drawing and she picked the parachute scene and Abby was the model for this picture.
We’ve been doing a lot of cooking during this quarantine. The girls love trying new recipes and Tyler’s even gotten into it. We get lunches from the school every day, so we always have a bowl full of apples and oranges. With all of the apples, Tyler pulled out our apple peeler/corer/slicer and taught Abby how to make applesauce. Every couple weeks when our apples are overflowing, we make applesauce again. I love that we get to do more things together as a family. Tessa and Aubrey wanted to make chocolate covered strawberries for dessert one night, so they spent the evening in the kitchen using a double boiler to melt chocolate and dipping strawberries and adding coconut for a delicious treat. They did it all on their own and it was super yummy.
One Saturday morning we made donuts from scratch and they were so good! I love donuts and I had been wanting to try to make donuts with my little fryer and so we did. We did chocolate frosted, maple frosted, and glazed donuts and they were all delicious.
After the long wait, the girls finally got their bunnies from the Kasallis’s. Tessa took a picture of her bunny that she named Flopsy because of its ears. Taryn’s bunny is named Thumper because it has a bum leg. It got hurt when it was tiny and now it’s leg just sticks out to the side kind of weird, but it still gets around without any problems. Taryn is the sensitive, empathetic one, so once she picked the bunny she loved, she didn’t care that it wasn’t perfect. She loved it no matter what. Aubrey’s bunny is named Panda because it’s black and white and huge. It was the biggest of the bunch even from the beginning and it’s still bigger than the other bunnies. It also has some extra fluffy hair that sticks up like a Mohawk and beard that everyone loves. The girls love to play with their bunnies and they’ve been a fun addition to our family.
After having the bunnies a couple days, we knew we had to have a tortoise vs. hare race, so we set up the track on the yoga mat and put Tessa’s tortoise, Buddy, against Aubrey’s bunny, Panda. Unfortunately, unlike the fable, the bunny won quickly. Maybe we’ll put it down to youth because Panda is definitely a lot younger than our the old man Buddy.
Abby talked the girls into doing a photo shoot and Aubrey jumped on the chance to dress up and pose for the camera. Aubrey loves to dress up and look pretty and she even had a wardrobe change during the photo shoot. Abby took a ton of pictures, some with filters, and these are just a few of my favorites.
Taryn decided she’d be a part of the photo shoot too only after Aubrey loaned her the purple dress to wear and Abby let her wear her Kendra necklace. These were some of my favorite pictures of Taryn. She’s growing up so fast.
Abby was really looking forward to photographing Tessa because she’s so photogenic, but Tessa’s the hardest one to convince to play along because she does not like to dress up and pose like the other two do. Once she got out there and got ready, the pictures turned out amazing. Abby’s good about telling the girls how to pose and will even do serious pictures which I never think about doing when I take pictures. Here are some of my favorites of Tessa. Abby loved that Tessa’s dress matched her eyes and really made her eyes pop.
I loved this picture of Aubrey and Taryn together and this was my all-time favorite picture of Tessa showing her blue, blue eyes. I posted it on facebook, along with most of these other pictures, and there were so many comments on Tessa’s blue-eyed photo. My beautiful girls growing up.
We’re trying to make the best of this hard situation. Tyler and I are lucky that we’re able to work from home and be home and still get paychecks, so we’re just enjoying the time together with family and finding things to do to stay busy around the house.
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