As a family we celebrate the Easter bunny on Saturday in an effort to focus on the Savior and His Resurrection on Sunday. I had gathered a bunch of candy and small prices with my couponing for the holiday. This all the items that would typically go in an Easter basket were hidden around our yard and our girls searched for all the items together with one large Easter basket that they were to share. They had a lot of fun. Some of their favorite treasures were battery operated princess toothbrushes, a bug home, lady bug binoculars and the ultimate favorite, the movie “Tangled”. That movie is now our favorite Disney movie. I LOVE it as do the girls!!! I didn’t have any Easter dresses for the girls this year, but they still looked beautiful in some dresses that were handed down from my little sisters. For dinner we had Prime Rib and had resurrection rolls which are dinner rolls rolled over a large marshmallow. When you back the roll, the marshmallow melts and leaves a hole inside the roll. The marshmallow of course represents Christ, the dough represents the cave he was buried in and the melted marshmallow and the resulting hole in the roll represents Christ’s resurrection. The girls LOVED this! It’s now going to be a yearly tradition for us.
This one never stays clean for long. She's at least a once or twice a day bather.
TANGLED!!
Are you lovin' Kelsey's outfit? Aren't those socks rockin'!?
Coloring Eggs
On April 8, some friends from work invited us to go to Palo Duro Canyon near Amarillo, Texas. We were thrilled to have a change of pace and get our camping gear out for the first time since moving to Texas. Last year was mostly spent helping Blake get better—I’m happy to report he is doing extremely well!! The drive to Palo Duro took us about 1.5 hours—the bad part—our air conditioner had broken a couple of days before!! We managed to survive though. The girls LOVED our tent and thought it was so cool!! I brought hot dogs and cut up veggies for dinner. Lanaea devoured it up—as you can see she didn’t stay clean very long LOL!! We spent the rest of the evening calming Mylee down because she was scared of our friend’s dog, going on a short hike and enjoying the experience of camping. Lanaea was probably the most fun to watch. She handled camping so much better and flawlessly then I ever expected her to. She was lovin’ life!! She enjoyed playing in the dirt and pointing out all the ants to us. Nighttime wasn’t as seamless as I would have hoped because Lanaea got cold and ended up sleeping with me through the night which meant little to no sleep for me. Kelsey and Mylee did great and slept the night through.
We thought the drive to camp was bad, the drive was 10 times worse going back when we had been in the heat of the day with no relief from our car air conditioner. We ended up stopping at a gas station to get the girls icee’s to cool off. Then they eventually got cool enough to fall asleep. Sweet little girls! After our trip, Blake got all the supplies he needed to fix our AC. He ended up replacing our compressor and re-doing the whole AC system. He was so proud that he had figured out how to fix it. Our mechanic had quoted us at least $1,000 and we didn’t pay nearly that much for Blake to fix it himself.
Both Lanaea and Kelsey are my fearless children. Lanaea has not concept of fear or her limitations. She’s constantly climbing on everything, chairs being her latest favorite. It scares me to death, but this seems to egg her on even more. As I come running her way she’ll stand up on her little chair and let go of her hands an clap as though she saying, “Ha, ha, look at me Mom!!”.
Lanaea with a purse, a hand mirror, and work goggles around her neck--it's a typical day. 
For those of you that know Blake, you know that he doesn’t like a lot of attention (can you tell, I can't even get him to look at the camera) and is perfectly content when others don’t it’s his birthday. He does, however, enjoy getting presents from those that love him. He always has a running wish list of very specific and particular things so money is usually the best gift for him, even from me. I’ve given up on trying to figure out what he wants. Trevor his brother though has him down to a “T” and comes up with the best gifts for him and they are always what he wants. So Trevor, next birthday or special occasion, I’m coming your way to get ideas. Me and the girls baked him a cheesecake—my first attempt!! It actually turned out to be delicious!! Phew!!
This winter we signed Mylee up for a ballet, jazz, and tap dance class. It’s been a sweet experience to see my sweet Mylee grow up and get involved in activities like this. This was the first class we signed her up for. She’s been doing really well and really enjoys it. Her teacher is really sweet and has some really fun ways of helping her students remember dance steps. For instance, for first position they have to let their heels kiss each other. For the hand positions in ballet they pretend they are putting scoops of ice cream on a cone. These and others have really helped Mylee remember her dance steps. It’s been sweet to see Mylee try to teach Kelsey some moves. Mylee’s signature moves are the penguin walk (a tap step) and a somersault. Whenever Kelsey does a cool trick she usually fires back with a somersault. 
Today my sweet little girl turned 6. It’s hard to believe that so much time has passed by. I could not have asked for a more sweet, loving, and precious little girl. She is so beautiful on the outside and on the inside. Inherently she knows what is right and tries her best to always choose the right. As I mother I could not be more proud of my daughter. At school she gets along with all of her class mates and tries to make friends with everyone. She’s excelling in school and is so far ahead of where she supposed to be as a kindergartener. One day while her kindergarten teacher was testing her for reading she finally had to stop at a level “i” because she was getting bored from reading so much. They start their reading level at “a” and then go up the alphabet from there. She loves to learn and is like a human sponge absorbing all the information that comes her way. She asks me all sorts of questions and a lot of the time I don’t know the answer so I tell her that we will have to look it up online. Now when I tell her I don’t know when she asks a question she responds, “Oh, we’ll have to look it up online.”
With Kelsey at school all day, these little girls have become close little friends. I should say though that Mylee hasn’t quite mastered the art of playing with a baby yet and because of that Lanaea often squeals and screams when Mylee tries to touch or do something to her. All and all though, as long as Mylee is not touching her or trying to lift her up, they have fun with one another. In this picture Lanaea is admiring Mylee in her beautiful dance clothes. It warms my heart to see my girls play with one another.
On February 19th, we went to the circus as a family. It was just a small circus, but the girls didn’t know any difference. We had a wonderful time. They had girls doing acrobatics on sheets of ribbon hanging from the ceiling. The girls were fascinated. Well, except for Lanaea. Blake and I mostly kept busy chasing her around and rescuing her from falling down the concrete stairs. They had an act with dogs doing all sorts of tricks and an act with lots of ponies and an act with motorcycles in a metal ball. After 2 hours, we eventually left because our girls were losing their attention. It was actually a good time to leave because they were just bringing out the elephants and Mylee was terrified of them. She saw them and cried and cried. It was good times.
Mylee thinks she should be losing her teeth too! 
I was in charge of Kelsey's class valentine party this year. It turned out great! The kids had fun and we had lots of good food to eat. Because of the obesity crisis among children in the US, it's Texas law that they can't eat sweet at school--only a couple times during school year--so made it heart-healthy and served heart-shaped sandwiches, fruit on kabobs, chicken nuggets, and caprisuns! Technically it was only supposed to be a snack--but it turned more into a meal, it was great though and the kids ate it up. Being that we couldn't serve sweets I had asked if a parent wanted to put together some kind of sweet treat the kiddos could take home with them as a party favor. Two mothers contacted me to volunteer for that. But to my surprise, at the party we ended up with those two mothers' sweet treats along with 4 other treat bags to take home!! The kids were mighty spoiled!
