Easter Sunday

Most of our weekend has been filled with conference--or, more to the point, Dan and I watching conference while the kids wander in and out. But the sessions have been wonderful. Sometimes I forget how much I need the talks until I hear them. This morning's session, especially, has spoken directly to me.

We did a small egg hunt with the kids this morning and it hasn't taken Oliver long at all to figure out what to do with the eggs and his bucket. Dan made blueberry muffins for breakfast (as per Andrew's request), and we're looking forward to an Easter dinner with my in-laws.

This past week was spring break for the kids, which was a little awkward as the university didn't have any sort of break. We still managed to have fun.

Tuesday afternoon we saw Cinderella with Sarah and her family, and Bubby and Poppy. Dan is the only one who wasn't able to come (he had lab). The movie was fine--but unfortunately, Oliver wasn't at all interested. Combine this with the fact that he hadn't napped, and we had a predictable recipe for disaster (I wanted to watch the movie; that's the only reason I can come up with for my foolishness). Luckily, it was discount movie day, so popcorn was only a dollar. We went down to the lobby twice to get popcorn, since eating was the only thing that kept Oliver sort of near his seat. When the popcorn ran out (and I refused to buy a third bag), he started roaming the theater. He managed to make a full circuit of the seats on the floor (no one was sitting there) before I caught him, and when he escaped again, he ran across the theater, climbed the stairs to the back row, and climbed across all the poor people sitting there.

We spent a lot of time in the little aisle by the back door, Oliver running in circles and me trying to catch glimpses of the movie. And while this wasn't fun, it would have been a little more bearable if Oliver hadn't pooped some time during the movie. I didn't have a spare diaper with me (he had already pooped four times that day and I thought--again, foolishly--that we were safe); the theater didn't have one either, so we were waiting out the end. (In retrospect, I should have just taken him home. It would have been much easier!) I didn't realize that he'd also blown out until we emerged from the theater and I found I had poop smeared all over my shirt.

Fortunately, the others seemed to enjoy the movie--especially Lydia, whose birthday it was. After running home to change and collect Dan, we had pizza at the local favorite, Bruno's.

We colored eggs with Sarah's kids on Wednesday by using a method that involved spraying pans with shaving cream, dropping food coloring into the cream, using skewers to mix the colors, and then rolling the eggs into the colors. It created some gorgeous eggs (my camera isn't working, and I still need to get the pictures from Sarah) with not too much mess--though the kids had food coloring stains on their hands for a couple of days and Dan says he can't eat the eggs because they smell (and taste?) like shaving cream. (That hasn't stopped Andrew, however, who apparently likes hard-boiled eggs).

Sarah and Bubby kindly watched all three of my kids while I had class that afternoon; afterward, we had dinner: the adults had ham and funeral potatoes inside; the kids had the same served outside (Jake was on Oliver duty), but in honor of April Fool's day, they had funny implements: poor Lydia only had a teaspoon to eat with; Jake's drink was served in a tiny tupperware container. We tried making April Fool's potstickers, which were fun to make but not terribly convincing. The chocolate dipping sauce was good though!

Thursday was quieter as Sarah and family went down to SG to be with Aaron's family. Friday afternoon, we drove down to the condo and had a nice time just hanging out. While the kids played, Dan and I got to go wander around Arts Fest for a bit. We also had a small egg hunt with candy and eggs we'd brought (Bubby and Poppy filled them while Dan and I were out)--we only had to remove half a dozen dog droppings from the area where we wanted to hide the eggs!

All told, it's been a lovely week.