Monday, March 24, 2008

Easter
I love springtime and the celebration of new life and the remembrance of THE new life we have in Christ! I'm so thankful to live in a place where we are able to openly celebrate Christ's resurrection. So often we take things like that for granted, but we are TRULY blessed to enjoy these freedoms and even more blessed to have the privilege of knowing and having relationship with our Creator. "Praise the Lord. Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty heavens. Praise him for his acts of power; praise him for his surpassing greatness...Let everything that has breath praise the Lord." (excerpted from Psalm 150)
We had a lovely Resurrection Sunday morning together as a family. We got up and had the requisite egg hunt. The kids don't believe in the Easter Bunny (they saw a person dressed up in a costume and it was apparently quite unbelievable - they determined that he's just a mascot, so he's just pretend). However, they believe in his helpers. The night before Easter, Aric came up with the great idea to leave cookies and milk out for the Easter Bunny's helpers. Taylor thought that was a great idea, too, since we'd dropped the ball at Christmas time. (For the record, they think Santa is pretend, but they think his helpers are real. They are convinced those real helpers are elves who must like cookies and milk. :-) We, of course, never got around to putting out snacks for the Easter Bunny's helpers, so they helped themselves to a few of the boys' marshmallow peeps. The boys were quite happy with the evidence that the helpers had been there.
Anyway, Aric got up before anyone else on Easter morning and came downstairs to scope out the egg situation. A few minutes later, Taylor also took a survey of the situation. They both agreed the Easter Bunny's helpers didn't do a very good job of hiding eggs. They gave a good critique of what should have been done with the obvious eggs to make them more challenging (i.e. "This hat should be turned over so I can't see the egg at all. This is way too easy.").
I think next year, the Easter Bunny's male helper will have to hide the eggs, because the female helper is apparently not tricky enough. After breakfast, we went to an Easter service at our new church up in Battle Ground, which we are liking very much. Then we went to Sweet Tomatoes for a yummy brunch. I had been planning an Easter ham for dinner, but Jeremy got word that the afternoon and evening were going to be quite busy for the tug company. Almost as soon as we came home from lunch, he had to go to work and he was gone until it was nearly the boys' bedtime, so I'm really glad we decided to have a nice lunch together as a family before he left. It was a very pleasant day.
The day before Easter was a very full and fun day. We went to Big Al's bowling alley in Vancouver for an "egg hunt." Turns out they just throw a pile of eggs in the middle of a circle of kids and then say "Go!" and it's every kid for himself. The boys had fun and successfully wrangled a number of eggs, so it was fun anyway. After the egg hunt, we saw the "Easter Bunny mascot." The boys declined to have their picture taken with him, saying, "that's too silly." They did enjoy watching a balloon artist making "anything in the whole world" - Taylor even thought he could've made a world out of a balloon if only Taylor had thought to ask for one. They were both quite impressed and Aric has a new career track in mind. :-)




We went to the park for a few minutes to try to practice batting, but it was so windy that the ball wouldn't stay on the tee. We came home and took advantage of the very windy day by flying kites. Grandma & Grandpa had purchased little kites for each of the boys at the Kite Festival in Long Beach, WA last fall. Taylor & Aric ran around and pulled the kites behind them, having a great time until they were "all out of air."



We also spent some time coloring and stickering eggs the day before Easter. It was a very fun day.




In ongoing house news, the electrician starts his work today, so hopefully by the end of this week, we'll have electricity inside the house again. :-) We were hoping and planning to have all the plumbing done before we did the electrical, but that hasn't quite happened. Jeremy's plugging away and getting closer all the time, and the parts that aren't done yet shouldn't interfere with the electrical installation, so we'll just keep working on plumbing before, during, and after they do the electrical. Here is an exciting picture. I'm standing in our dining room looking at the kitchen area. The half wall is where our eating bar will be. Jeremy has all the windows in their final positions now. It's really shaping up, isn't it? You can see the pantry behind the kitchen area and the guest bathroom past the pantry, then the garage past all the framing. Having a "see-through house" makes it fairly easy to explain things. :-) We're also excited about our master bathroom. We acquired an oversized 6-foot soaking tub on Craisglist, and I can't wait to soak in a tub built for tall people. People often complain about being short, and I do like being on the tall side, but when it comes to bathing and finding pants that are long enough, short people definitely have it easier. :-)
I think that's all the news for now. Ascha's still doing great and the pregnancy is going fairly well. She'll be here in about 95 days, give or take, and we're hoping to get this house project done and be all moved in before she makes her entrance, so we've got a lot to do. I must say (yet again, but it's so true) that I'm SO thankful to have such a handy and hardworking husband!!!

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