General Conference

We had a fantastic general conference weekend. We love the opportunity to listen to the prophet and apostles. We strive to take the challenges they give and follow them. There is always so much going on helping our kids and so I am excited to go back and read through the talks. As is our tradition, we went to see the progress on the Saratoga Springs temple and talked about how we are striving to build a temple life. There was also a lot of fort building and so much candy (and conference bags). The kids enjoyed it and so did we. 

Easter

We had a really enjoyable Easter (paired with conference the same weekend). Here are a few of the pictures.

Our kids love egg hunts and so we had numerous egg hunts and it made their week. 

Shantel took the kids to do an egg hunt with Melissa and Zach. 

We had an egg hunt with the Haderlies. 

On Sunday morning we did Easter baskets and then an Easter egg hunt. Shantel and I had fun hiding the eggs for the kids all around the main floor of the house and it was so much fun when they celebrated finding them. 

We are grateful for the many traditions around Easter, but most of all for the opportunity to reflect on the resurrection of the Savior Jesus Christ. We have the chance to think not just his death, but on his life and on how we might more fully follow him. 

April Fools Food

April Fools is one of my kids very favorite holidays. Truth be told, they think the holiday is a day of eating funny foods - and that's the one thing that we are good at. It's just funny and a lighthearted day. I wasn't feeling up to much this year, but my mom invited Jenna and I to come up and spend the day in Morgan. My mom did breakfast and Jenna hit it out of the park with snack and lunch. I was so grateful for both my mom and Jenna. Here was our menu for the day: 

Breakfast: Eggs (yogurt and peach halves) and Sausage (brown scrambled eggs)

Snack: A box of donuts (yay! donuts for snack!) filled with fruits and veggies (which the kids ate just as happily and probably better than they would have eaten donuts)

Lunch: Spaghetti and Meatballs (cake with noodle frosting, brownie meatballs, and jam sauce). Jenna also made real spaghetti and meatballs to eat for lunch and we ate the cake right after. 

Dinner: 

So here's the deal. I was tired. My kids had already been spoiled by all the fun April First foods in Morgan, but we had to come home to Lehi for dinner. I didn't really want to do anything else. The kids were all but demanding a special dinner. I told them that we weren't going to do anything special for dinner, that we'd done all of our fun foods for the day. Then at dinner time, I told them that we were having Italian for our meal. I set the table with dried pasta and raisins while Austin railed on and on about how "No! It's April Fool's Day! We SHOULD have something fun for dinner." I just kept calmly repeating that it was going to have to be a regular meal and that we could be grateful for such fun food earlier in the day. 

Part of me was cringing at the entitlement that I could hear lacing the words- but the other part of me was just laughing because clearly, it's not "regular" for us to eat dried pasta. As we started our meal, I told them that it was a new italian dish that i'd been wanting to try the recipe for and I wanted them all to try it. They sat there crunching their dry pasta (and not even complaining as much as they do at some of our real dinners). Austin was particularly upset, NOT about the dried pasta, but about the lack of an April Fool. 

Lydia finally said that she didn't really love it (after several whole minutes of crunching the pasta). David said "Oh! The parmesan cheese! We forgot the parmesan cheese in the car from when I went to the store earlier" He walked out to the car and came back in with Pizza Hut Pizza. It was an epic APRIL FOOLS! I'm still amused about it.