Happy Easter!

HE IS RISEN!! What an awesome time we had this year celebrating the resurrection of our Savior Jesus. I find myself so grateful and in awe for the death that He died for us on the cross, and even more grateful for Him rising from the grave 3 days later, to conquer death for us all! How He loves us.

Some great Bible verses:

"I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die." John 11:25-26

"But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him." Acts 2:24

"This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us."

1 John 3:16

"In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade."
1 Peter 1:3-4

The day before Easter, we had a great time having some of our friends over for an Easter egg hunt and dinner. Rachel and Nick have two sons, Dominick, 10, and Simon, 2. And Valerie came with her beautiful little 7 month old girl Kendall.

The day before, I dyed some eggs for the kids to decorate (I think Noah and Simon are still a little young for this part...). But they had fun coloring them and decorating them with stickers!

"Hidden" egg :-)

Noah and Simon in a field of plastic eggs. :-)

Simon taking a break to dig into some of his candy!

Kendall helped by giving Noah an egg.

We couldn't stop these kids from digging into their candy!

Andy's family has had a tradition on Easter morning of leaving a trail of candy to find their Easter baskets. In my family, our baskets were always hidden and we would have to go find them. We decided to forego the candy trail this year, only because we knew it would lead to Noah having a belly full of candy before his breakfast, but we might start that tradition up next year!After we gave Noah his basket and we ate breakfast, we went to church and then the annual Easter breakfast after the service. Then the children's ministry put on some Easter crafts and a big Easter egg hunt for the kids. Noah had a lot of fun decorating a cross, an egg carton, and collecting more eggs!

Noah's Easter basket!

Family portrait by the cross of flowers outside our church.

Mommy helping Noah decorate a foam cross.

Silly pose...after Andy snapped like 20 pictures of us working on the cross.

After church, our plan was to come home, get Noah down for his nap, and get the house and appetizers ready for everyone to come over for dinner. All of these things happened except for the nap...can we say sugar high?? Noah was not about to take a nap, so it made for an interesting afternoon, but he did pretty good. Our friends Hannah and Isaac and their 2 kids came over, along with Andy's family and my family. We had a great time!

Appetizers, mmm...:-)

Table #1

Table #2 (flowers from my mom's yard!)

Fireplace with new Partylite purchase in the fireplace, I love candles! :-)

Outside enjoying the sun that finally came out before dinner!

My mom getting ready to eat some yummy dinner!

All the goodies: honeybaked ham with champagne mustard, homemade dinner rolls (by my Grandma), spinach/strawberry/asparagus salad, scalloped potatoes, jello salad and potato salad!

The "adult" table :-)

And the crazy toddler table (speaking of my own anyway) :-) Noah has become quite a handful at the dinner table the last couple of weeks, so we decided we'd split it up a little bit. Although, he did pretty good and ate most of his plate!

And this is what Grandma decided to do after dinner, fill Noah's mouth with whipped cream!

He wasn't complaining, it was pretty funny :-)

Homemade strawberry shortcake for dessert made by my mom, it was so good!

Greg getting ready to dig in!

We hope you all had a wonderful Easter weekend celebrating with family and friends!

Easter Egg Hunt/BBQ @ Grandma's!

Last weekend, we had a great time going over to my mom's for an Easter egg hunt with Greg's two girls, Annemarie and Julia. Noah LOVES them, and they are so good with him, they have so much fun together! Greg makes awesome BBQ and made his famous ribs this time, and we also had salad, baked potatoes, baked beans, and macaroni salad - a feast! It was a great time celebrating together.

Annemarie, Noah and Julia getting ready to find some eggs!

Noah's first egg!

Julia helping Noah get an egg from the plant.

He learned very quickly if he opened the egg, there was candy inside! (We are going on a candy fast this week...after 3 Easter egg hunts, this kid needs a break from candy!)

Beautiful Julia :-)

Beautiful Annie :-)

Noah very excited about his chocolate!

Greg working on grilling the ribs! Mmm, they were so good. :-)

Happy Birthday!

4-20-11 brought a lot of birthday milestones in our family!

My Aunt Lisa turned 50!!!! Here she is a little while ago with her precious granddaughter Sophie :-)

My cousin Sara turned 21!!!

My brother-in-law Eric turned 18!!! Cannot believe the baby in their family is 18 and will be attending USC in the Spring next year! We had a great time celebrating last night at Chicago Fire Pizza downtown, and had some really yummy cake back at their house afterwards. He received quite a few scratcher cards, and we're seeing we might need to reign this kid in from the casino's one day. :-)

My cousin Joshua's daughter Sophie (and above-mentioned Lisa's granddaughter) turned ONE!

Happy birthday to all these members of my family, and I hope your day was filled with joy and celebration!!

Impulsive Picnic at the Park

On Sunday afternoon, I was feeling like I was getting bored just being in the house, and really felt like I needed to get out and do something! Noah went down for a late nap (around 3!), so Andy and I were trying to decide what to do. Normally we try to work on little projects around the house or yard on the weekend, but it was a little too late to get started on something (and I was sooo not motivated...let's be honest) :-).

So around 5 when we got Noah up, we decided it would be fun to go down to Elk Grove Park to feed the ducks and BBQ some dinner! We had a great time just hanging out as a family and feeding the ducks, and Kona even was able to get some energy out at the dog park with Andy.

Mmm...cantaloupe

Noah eating the duck food we brought (hot dog buns)...I need to remember to never bring moldy bread for the ducks just in case!

Big goose!

Noah saying, "No duck!" Apparently when my mom took him to feed the ducks a couple weeks ago, he learned to say this to them when they all started chasing him!

Fun times running in the park.

A stick!

Dinner :-)

Family self-portrait :-)

Pretty girl Kona tired from fetching!

Mmm...good ol' American BBQ: hot dog, cheeseburger, macaroni salad and garden vegetable salad (we had to have a veggie somewhere in there, even if I was the only one to eat it!)

Andy enjoying his dinner

Noah loving his hot dog!

Back to Blogging :-)

After a really long break, I am realizing that I miss this blogging world. I miss being able to look back on documented stories and pictures. I've also been told it's a good way for our family and friends (especially those not close to us locally) to keep up to date on our busy little family! And we love you guys, we love hearing from you too! So this first one will be short and sweet, but I'm excited to be back! Some things I'm hoping to blog about in the near future:

~Noah, of course (I have officially become an obnoxious mom that talks about little except her child) :-)

~Our daily adventures

~Things God is teaching me

~The progress we are making with our house (I know, it's STILL not done!?)...I'm beginning to realize I maybe have unrealistic standards for myself...but hopefully we'll have some more pictures of how we're trying to make our house pretty! But I must say, I am GRATEFUL to have a beautiful home that is so full of potential we can fill over the years, God has been good.

~My joys of gardening, which so far just include attempting to keep the weeds under control (hopefully I can plant something pretty in the ground this year!)

~My sewing adventures...yup, I'm going to take a class!

~My cooking creations and/or mishaps.

~Our camping and backpacking adventures, we love the great outdoors!

~Any other things I might take up that allow me to have a creative outlet...because with a 2 year old, I need that in my life!

Speaking of Noah, can you believe he will be TWO next month!? I can't either! Everyone always tells you life goes so fast, I'm starting to believe them. Can we please push pause for just a minute?? He keeps us on our toes, for sure. He is ALL boy...we've recently been working in the yard, and let me tell you, he would dig in the dirt from morning till night if I let him! I love that about him though. In fact, yesterday he tried to eat a worm for the first time...yikes.

So bye for now, hope to be back soon! Here are a few recent pictures, enjoy!

Noah with Daddy's headlamp on.

Noah and Mommy's campout in the living room while Daddy was in Chicago.

Andy getting ready to remove the giant sucker from our neighbor's tree with his sawzall...he was really excited to use that thing!

Noah and Mommy at Papa Greg's concert, Noah was mesmerized by him playing the guitar!

Andy's dish night ;)

Valentine's Day this year, Andy surprised me with an amazing fondue dinner!

Our big boy doing such a good job brushing his teeth!