Weekly Wind Down {Beautiful Weather, Daddy's Birthday!, Basement Tidy, Easter Baskets} April 2-9

Miss Evie looking mighty sweet for church on Sunday....she matched her bag to her shoes.

Natalee and Xavier had VBS practice after church and classes.

It was a truly gorgeous day to ring in April and we spent over 7 hours outside soaking it in.  

Sign of the season....mother's roses. 

Playing catch with daddy...

Supper outside, too!

Monday was a school day, but we also used the downtime in the week to clean, tidy, and prep to host Mike's extended family for Easter.  We didn't go overboard, but we did "spring clean" a lot of areas that needed it anyways.

A mama Evie ready to nap with her babies.

Papa stopped by on his way home from Aunt Annette's to bring frosties and fries.  What a treat!

Monday wasn't as warm as Sunday but the kids did get 3 hours outdoors playing.

On Tuesday we celebrated Daddy's birthday!!

He worked part of the day and then took the afternoon off.  Our gifts to him were the remaining books in a series he's enjoying and encouragement to get the tattoo he's been wanting.

Mike spent part of his birthday helping juggle OT/PT therapies and we spent the evening at the ball parks at practice for the boys.  No better way to ring in another year of life than chasing kids.

I got up and made Mike breakfast for his birthday, and he had decided to treat us to donuts on his way home from early morning Bible study.  We saved the donuts for after lunch and they made a nice treat.

We had birthday lasagna, as per usual!

Wednesday morning found this dolly in my bed, in my space.  Sigh.

Evie planted this little grass head in my co-op class and it was time for it's first hair cut.

Wednesday evening we had the Awana end of year fun fair.  Between Mike and I we got exactly one photo....Evie enjoying her dye free snow cone.

But the fair was a great success, with a full moon nonetheless.

Our streak of warm weather ended Tuesday night.  Wednesday brought cold and Thursday wasn't much better.  Xavier and Evalynn bundled up to walk a return down to the campus mailroom.  The sweetest pair of buddies.

And we spent a TON of man hours working downstairs in the basement library/playroom.  We got rid of some pieces of furniture that weren't serving us well anymore, and installed a shelf with clear bins that I'd bought at Sam's that could serve us better in this season.  We purged, we cleaned, we labeled, we sorted....we worked hard and the result felt good.  

nothing more inviting that a tidied play area....

All of the kids went with Mike to ball practices and left me in silence to put the finishing labels on things and do the last vacuuming and final touches. 

The result:

I took this video of Zayden "taking a break" while we were cleaning.  The amount of movement it takes his brain to focus is so intense.  Bless him.

Since we had a busy Easter weekend ahead of us we decided to do Easter buckets on Good Friday morning.  The kids set them out for us and we filled them and hid them for Friday.

Good Friday was a day together.  We began with Easter buckets, playing, goodies, and just a slow morning.

I found some fun new dye free candies for the kids this year, which is always a treat.  We did a fresh pair of summer shoes for everyone, a tee-shirt (sundress for Ev), and a lightweight turkish towel to take to the pool this summer.

Mike's package from a KC Tools giveaway he won arrived....

Mike and the boys rebuilt the little picnic table and did a great job of it.  

A new hammock chair to take the place of our baby swing.

I spent a lot of time in the kitchen prepping for Saturday.  The weather warmed up and it was beautiful inside and out.  I made some strawberry, banana, aronia berry smoothies for the crew at midday.

Then Mia came in to help make cinnamon rolls!

It was a lovely Friday that we ended with Good Friday church service.  Mike played guitar for the service and a presenter from Jews for Jesus explained the Passover table which we all found intriguing.

Saturday was a full, perfect day that deserved it's own post!