Savannah's Birthday

Happy 6th Birthday!

What a beautiful birthday girl on the inside and out!! Savannah lives up to her middle name in every since of the word Joy. She is such a blessing to our family. I love her sparkling eyes and mischievous grin. Her laughter is infectious and gets us all going every time. Savannah is so full of life and energy and that helps her succeed in gymnastics and other things she tries.




Anastasia made the cake and Savannah decided on a bunny since we were celebrating her birthday on Easter.

Our family

Grandma and Papa

Grandma (Papaw was sick)

Aunt Brandy and Uncle Sean

Cousins

A new out fit from the cousins

Savannah asked the grandparents for money to put towards her summer gymnastics class.


Time for Cake! Happy Birthday Baby!!!

Easter

"He is not here, for He has risen, just as He said. Come, see the place where He was lying." Matthew 28: 6

Easter morning was a flurry of excitement getting ready for church. The girls got to wear their new dresses. We were all in some shade of teal. (Aunt Jutem got us started by buying Alexa and Savannah's Easter dress while she was here visiting) The boys had new shirts and everyone had new sandals. (Buying shoes for this crew is CRAZY!!) Now of course new clothes was not our entire focus but it was fun to dress up and we all don't get brand new clothes that often.

By time we woke up and started getting ready, Jay had already been at church for a couple of hours! Our church has an Easter sunrise service (5:30am). Umm yeah we won't be making this a tradition until the kids are older! ;) So we showed up for Sunday school at a more reasonable hour of 9:30am and then church at 11.

The Easter bunny comes some time while we are at church to fill the kids baskets. That way our first focus of the day is Our Lord and Savior and then we come home for fun and games. This year we also invited family over to celebrate Savannah's birthday as well. (see next post)

The kids got bubbles, hula hoops, jump ropes, a nerf gun, Jadon got a big bouncy ball and of course there was plenty of candy and chocolate!












After the enjoying of baskets, family came over and we had a yummy meal and celebrated Savannah's birthday. Then we went with my sister and her family to a nearby park and she took pictures of the kids and our families. They turned out beautiful! I will post some here soon.

When we came back all the kids participated in an egg hunt out in our back yard.


This is a picture of my mom (My dad was sick and couldn't make it) with 11 out of 14 of their grand kids.

I didn't take many pics of the egg hunt. However I made Tyler and Anastasia pose for this one. Because as they were all looking for eggs I was thinking back to their first Easter and them looking for eggs together. Now look at them!!! Love you guys and thanks for indulging me in this picture!


This is a collage my sister made of some of the Easter pictures! I LOVE IT!

Happy Resurrection Sunday!!!

Resurrection Rolls

When teaching my children, I love finding ways that are hands on and fun. Add edible to that mix and score! We have a keeper. We have made Resurrection rolls for several years now. It is our Easter morning tradition. They are super simple to make and taste great.

Here are my amazing chefs! ;)

The only ingredients you need are:

pkg of crescent rolls

marshmallows

melted butter

cinnamon/sugar mixture

The marshmallow represents Jesus's body. The butter represents the oil used in anointing the dead body. The cinnamon represents the spices used in burial.

So dip the marshmallow in the butter and then roll in the cinnamon.

The crescent rolls represents the tomb Jesus was buried in. Wrap the marshmallow in the "tomb" Pinch the edges to seal tightly.

Place on a slightly greased cookie sheet and bake at 350 for about 10-12 mins.

After they cool and the kids take a bite they will see that the "tomb" is empty!

Easter Traditions

As you know, I love holidays and family traditions. Well Easter (or as we like to call it, Resurrection Sunday) is no exception. We love to do our Resurrection Eggs egg hunt and read Benjamin's Box, we love to decorate eggs and for our third year in a row we LOVE going to the Good Friday service at our church.

When I went through our Easter boxes and got out our decorations I found plenty of egg dyes so I was glad to not have to buy any this year. Well my hubby being the funny guy that he is ;) decided to use them all up so we could get new ones next year! LOL I came into the kitchen and the picture above is what I found all out on our kitchen counter. Needless to say the kids were ALL excited about all the colors!

Let the coloring begin.....

I hard boiled about 5 dozen eggs. (It's a good thing my kids like to eat hard boiled eggs and egg salad!)

Anastasia's friend Taylor joined us for all the fun!

I had to get pictures of Jadon and his first time coloring eggs. Of course he didn't understand at all what we were doing! But it was fun. lol


He just wanted to eat the egg and drink the dye!

Then on the evening of Good Friday our church has a Good Friday service. It is a tenebrae candle light service. On Christmas Eve it is a similar service talking of course of Christ's birth and candles are lit one by one as the story is told. Well for Good Friday the candles are lit but as the story is told one by one the candles are blown out until we are in total darkness. This year Pastor Don told the story from the disciple Peter's perspective and Jay sang some special music) Anastasia was the official candle extinguisher. (She did a great job).

With Jay and Anastasia being busy this left me to sit with the other 5 kids. Now the older 3 are no problem and Natasha is pretty good. Jadon was really good too but every time Pastor Don said "Jesus" Jadon would start to sing "Jesus Loves Me" Talk about precious, but this was a very quiet service and Jadon was not very quite. Now he wasn't fussy or anything he just wanted to preach too! LOL So I took him and stood in the back and thankfully another friend went and sat by the other kids.

Now I had to take the two pictures you are about to see below because when the lights were turned back on this is how I found Alexa and Natasha. (It was a later service and they did not have naps).................

Alexa is actually sleeping and kept making this face in her sleep. I thought it was cute!

Jesus said to him, " I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me. John 14:6

Wrapping up another year of Co-op

Co-op wrapped up a month early this year due to some scheduling conflicts. It is so hard to believe we have completed our 3rd year in co-op. It seems like just yesterday when I went to the first meeting to find out all about it.

In March I taught in Anastasia's class again. (I really slacked in the picture department these last two months) I taught the Art and Critical thinking and Donna taught the Lit. study. For Lit. study they began reading The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. We have seen the movie but not read the book yet so I read it as a read aloud to all my kiddos. They really enjoyed it and I think we are going to continue the series over the summer.

For the last co-op in April we had our annual Yearbook signing party. The yearbooks turned out fabulous. The kids did a really good job putting them together. We also held a clothing swap. Everyone just brought clothes they were ready to part with and then went "shopping" at one an other's tables. We came home with some great finds! Especially for Joshua who needed new shorts. :)

I love co-op but I am also ready for the break just because Sundays and Mondays are so crazy for us. We plan on still doing some activities with our co-op friends over the summer and look forward to starting up again in September

In March Joshua and Savannah's class focused on Camping/first aid and safety. This is them playing the fun "left right center" game with giant marshmallows!

Alexa's class spent the month of March learning about the wonderful works of Dr. Seuss. So of course for snack one day they had green eggs and ham!

We made it to a park day one of the last weeks of co-op and I realized that this was Jadon's first time in a swing. He loved it! (All the parks near us do not have any swings).