Easter 2018

Better late than never - we had a great Easter a couple weeks ago.  At church they were volunteering to take family photos, so we actually got a picture with the four of us.  I was excited!  :)

After church, we met at Mousey and Poppy’s house for our Easter traditional lunch, egg hunt, and more.  After lunch, the adults hid the eggs while the “kids” worked inside on a project.  They were given only a certain number of materials and were challenged to make some sort of cradle for an egg that was going to be dropped from about 10 feet onto concrete.  As the girls have gotten older, the egg hiding has become more intense, but honestly these were some of the easier finds.  The harder ones were out in the field where I didn’t venture with my camera.

  

 

The girls prepared their egg cradles in groups.  Nina and Emme worked on one, while Lyla, Layne, and Ryleigh worked on the other.

   

Both eggs managed to survive the drop, so no one was named a winner, but both groups were proud of their creation.

  

The girls had a blast with their egg hunt.  They got tons of eggs which equaled tons of candy which equaled happy girls.

  

The only one NOT happy was Cayenne.  As you can see in the picture, she was made to stay in the house, and was NOT happy about it.  She whined and cried so much to get out. The only reason we had her stay inside is because she loves to find eggs, and she’s actually quite good at it, so we had to wait until most of the eggs were found before we let her out.

  

In the meantime, Maggie had found an egg, dug a little hole, put her egg in the hole, then used her nose to cover it back up.  Too cute!

  

We felt Maggie was safe to be outside during the egg hunt.  I think she thought the game was Hide and Seek!  :)

    

We finally relesed Cayenne from house jail, and she found quite a few eggs.

 

Finaly, Lyla and Nina smartened up and figured it was smart to follow Cayenne’s nose to more eggs.  They said she helped them find quite a few more!

 

After the egg hunt, there was an egg toss challenge this year.  All the girls did a great job... 

  

…but in the end it came down to just two teams standing...

…and Emme and Poppy were victorious!

 As always, we had a great time celebrating this special holiday with the family.  We certainly are blessed in many ways!

 

Spring Break Part 2

For our second half of the spring break week, we were down at Hartfield.  Mark had to work Monday and Tuesday of the week, so we left after his morning meeting on Wednesday to head down.  Right away the girls were all about making a fire. Poppy had built a fire the previous night and the embers will still hot, so it didn’t take much for the fire to start back up again.  They gathered lots of sticks and kindling, and then we had smores out at the fire after dinner.  

  

  

Thursday morning started off rather eventfully.  My dad had gotten to Hartfield before the rest of us had, and when he arrived he found that there was a little baby bunny in a nest under the open part of the house where they keep the boats, kayaks, outdoor stuff, etc.  Unforunately, the bunny wasn’t going to be in a safe position with Maggie and Cayenne there.  My dad tried to cover up the nest so the dogs couldn’t find the bunny, but Maggie found it on Thursday morning and from the kitchen window we noticed her tossing something around in the yard.  Pops ran out there and got the baby bunny which was still alive, and since it didn’t have any puncture wounds, we hoped to be able to save it.  We got the bedding from the nest and brought it inside, but we didn’t know how long it had been in the nest by itself and if the mother was coming to care for it or not, so we called around a couple places for advice.  Unfortunately, no one was able to help us and the bunny didn’t last long before it died.  :(

 

To give the bunny a nice send off, the girls built and decorated a raft then planned to give it a little water burial.  They worked hard on the raft, and it helped take away some of the sadness about the bunny dying.  

  

They carried it down to the water, and we all followed in a little processional, and then the bunny sailed off to it’s watery grave. Very dramatic!

 

Nevermind the bald eagle circling overhead...

 

…or the Brittany Spaniel peering over the dock.  :)

Inspired by the bunny burial raft, Nina and Lyla got into making more rafts after that.  

So, they took the paddleboards out to set off their rafts and paddle around on the water.  Cayenne kept a close eye on her girls while they were out though!

   

Friday was supposed to be rainy, but after a little rain in the morning, things dried up and we went out fishing.  Lyla really wanted to go to the horses as well, so while Mark and Nina headed first to the pond, Lyla and I went to the horses then met them up at the pond for fishing.

  

Although the conditions were supposed to be great for catching fish, only Nina and Mark caught one each.  

  

  

 

 

 

The girls also worked with Mousey on an awesome watercolor painting.  Both of them turned out so nicely!

 

We all headed back home on Saturday so we could get ready for Easter the next day, but it was a nice spring break of doing some fun things around home at first then heading down to Hartfield for some family time and river time.