Happy Easter!

And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, "Why do you seek the living among the dead" He is not here, but has risen." (Luke 24: 5-6)

We had a wonderful weekend celebrating our risen King. The greatest day in history was the day that Jesus defeated Satan, sin and death. We serve an amazing God and to Him be all the glory.

We went to the Good Friday service at our church. It was powerful. They showed some clips of the "Passion of the Christ" and wove in worship music throughout. Then our worship pastor spoke about the 3 emotions most people would be feeling while watching what Jesus went through on our behalf: grief, guilt, and gratitude.

On Friday afternoon we went to our neighbor's house for an Easter Egg hunt. The kids had a blast!

Then on Sunday our neighbors joined us at church and we heard the Good News. Easter Sunday is my favorite. The best celebration ever. Life changing.

 We tried to take some family pictures before heading to church. Some turned out beautifully and I also decided to include some of the outtakes because they are a more realistic portrayal of our lives. (see above).

And some more outtakes.

I love my boys.

And this one (above) of Spencer trying to make it back to the picture before the timer went off. 

Today we went down to the creek with the kids and let them run wild and free. I love seeing them toss rocks into the water, find sticks to use a fishing poles, and work together to cross the creek without getting soaked.

This guy is no longer content hanging out it Momma's arms. He wants to explore too!

And this morning we had our family Easter egg hunt.

Happy Easter from our family to yours!

Lately...

Here are some pictures from our last couple of weeks.

Ella has a penpal. Her name is Anna and she lives in Florida. I connected with her mom through a homeschool group. It has been very special seeing our girls write letters back and forth. It also been a great way for Ella to practice her cursive writing.

Our girls love to paint with watercolors. Above is Pocahontas. We just read a biography about her and also watched the movie.

The daffodils at our park have bloomed. We have watched them progress over the past few weeks and the girls were excited to see a few fully opened.

Climbing trees and collecting snails at nature group.

Our nature group visited the historic Stewart farm. We even got a tour of the Stewart home. It was wonderful to see all the different rooms since a lot of the books we read are set in homes like this one (with a parlor room, a sewing room, a wood burning stove, etc.)

The biggest challenge of the trip was explaining to Peter that the train set that was set-up on the floor was an antique and could not be played with. This didn't jive too well with our two year old boy ;)

A tadpole hunting we did go.

We found some frog eggs and took them home with us. We are hoping to see them progress into tadpoles, then frogs, then release them into our local pond.

Before Spencer left for Indiana, we went down to our local pond at dusk. And for our first time we saw the beaver that lives in the lodge. He is huge!! He swam around in the pond and waddled around on the bank for a bit. Our girls were ecstatic. We walk by his beaver lodge several times a week and have had so many conversations wondering who he is and what he looks like. It was a special evening for us.

While Dadda was away we bought some flowers and veggies for our garden.

The bald eagles must have a nest close to our home. We see them almost daily. They are impressive and we have loved observing them. It is a blessing to us to have all of this nature in our Whalley neighborhood. We didn't think this would be the case, but God has exceeded our expectations.

Grandma came to visit for a few days while Dadda was in Indiana. 

Ella has been knitting purses. She is a self-taught knitter and often comes and shows me these end results. I am hoping she will make one big enough for me to use :)

The girls version of our tea party is pictured above, the boys version is below.

Silas loves to watch his siblings. He stands at the door and says "go, go, go".

I love my sous-chefs.

And the other day Silas climbed right out of his highchair and was crawling across our table. Thankfully Juliette rescued him.