Palm Sunday and Spring Break

This past Sunday was Ben's real birthday and also Palm Sunday. Since General Conference will be on Easter Sunday, we had our special Easter Service. The morning felt hectic because we needed to celebrate Ben's day by letting him open gifts but I also had to make sure everyone's hair and clothes were on point for the family picture we always take on our special Easter service. So in all the chaos I failed to get a picture of Ben with his gifts. His big gift was tickets to a "Weird Al" concert in July. Then he got some candy, a giftcard for Steam from my parents, and money from Tyler's parents. 

The service itself was ok. Our congregation is small these days so our choirs are small and not so mighty. And I was a bit distracted by Ruby's shenanigans so I didn't get too much out of the talks. But we looked all cute and matchy so there's that.

After church we decorated our Easter Bunny Cake as per tradition. It felt like a fitting thing to do on Ben's birthday. They made it creepy as always.

After dinner we celebrated Ben's birthday with some cupcakes. I can't believe I have another driver in the house! He is a good kid. I am gratefulness for how he is always willing to do things with his siblings and is a unifier in a our home.

This week was Spring Break for the kids. I figured with all of them home to help watch Ruby, this was a good chance for me to go on a little road trip with Grace. So on Monday Grace and I went back to the Dollar Book Swap store in Ohio that we had gone to on our girls trip the previous summer. We wanted to stock up on some more books. It was a bit of a drive, 3.5 hours, but we had some good talks. We also had some eventful events. First, about an hour in, the exit to a freeway we were supposed to get on was closed. I am usually directionally challenged but I managed to navigate us to a road that ran parallel to the freeway and eventually we were able to get on the freeway. Slightly stressful but we figured it out. The second eventful event was that a piece of her car just randomly flew off while we were on the freeway- like it didn't want to live anymore. I think it was the windshield molding? Whatever it was it was a little noisy and shocking when it flew off but nothing detrimental. 

We spent two hours at the book store and I mostly stocked up on books for Ruby- eveything is $1.50 and they have a huge kids selection. I did also find a couple good books for me- one with paintings that reminded me of my Italy trip. I didn't find the books that Penny wanted me to get but I did find one I thought she might like- she did end up liking it and finished it quickly. It was a successful outing. After our shopping we got a very late lunch at a Mexican place. The food was good, tasted fresh. Then we hit up a thrift store. I didn't end up getting anything but Grace had some good finds. After that it was time to head home. We didn't take any pictures but it was a really nice daytrip and a good little escape from life. 

On Tuesday I was going to clean the house but the weather was really good so I decided on a last minute trip to the Toledo Zoo. Lucy wasn't interested in going, but I managed to get Penny and Ben to join Ruby and me. It really was a beautiful day and we saw lots of fun animals. I wonder if you can spot the leopard in the picture on the left below.

Ruby was very excited to go to the aquarium there and she wanted to stare at these jellyfish forever. There were more jellyfish in the aquarium but she seemed less excited by them for some reason. 

The owls were making some funny faces at us so Penny managed to get some good pictures of them. We also got to watch the baby orangutan make a mess with some shredded paper. So cute!

I got the kids some french fries to snack on while we were there and below is the pose Ruby gave me when I asked to take a picture of her. It's like she is a Queen waving at us. All in all it was a great zoo day. We left after a couple hours because a storm was supposed to roll in and we did not want to get caught up in it (there was a chance of tornadoes). We lucked out and made it home without encountering any crazy weather.

Tuesday after dinner I took Ruby and Penny to the library, while Tyler went out shooting with Ben and Lucy. Ruby was playing with a little boy who was missing a hand and at one point she must have noticed the missing hand because she just stared at where it should have been with a puzzled look. A day or 2 later she said to me "mom, my friend had no hand"- like it had just dawned on her what was missing.

Tuesday evening we watched the 1987 movie "The Gate". It was weird as heck but definitely one we will laugh about later. There was a part where the kid gets hurtled from the house and it was obviously a manequin spinning in circles. We rewatched that part severalt times and had a good laugh. 

Wednesday morning I took the kids to Dave and Busters. They have half price games on Wednesdays and I am not sure why we have never come on a Wednesday before. It sure helped our money to go further. The kids had a lot of luck and Penny won a roll of 500 tickets and Lucy won 4 stuffies out of a claw machine. Ben also won a stuffie out of the same claw machine. It's not like we raelly needed more stuffies but Ruby sure enjoyed lugging around all the stuffies. I failed to take a picture of her carrying them around. She was kind of prone to fit throwing while we were there so it wasn't my favorite outing but I think Penny, Lucy and Ben had a good time. Ruby ended up getting a bucket of kinetic sand with her tickets which she has loved making messes with since bringing it home. The other kids got some candy and other misc junk with their tickets.

After we were done there, I made them go with me to Barnes and Nobles because it was close by. I know I just bought a ton of books Monday but they didn't have any drawing books and I was on the hunt for some for myself. I probably should not have dragged the kids there because Ruby was still being fussy. It was tricky trying to look at things while Ruby cried for me to buy her everything, but I managed to find myself one drawing book. The big kids were nice and took her to the car while I was checking out. 

Wednesday we had our traditional April Fool's dinner. All the food is in code and they order 3 things for every course but they don't know what they are actually ordering. Everyone had a pretty disappointing first course- a couple of them got toppings for the ice cream but no ice cream. Most of them got bowls but no spaghetti. Lucy also got parmesan and no spaghetti. It always fun to see what they'll get. Then they reversed roles and served me. I ended up with spaghetti and no bowl for my first course. This year it felt less stressful, I think I am finally getting a system down. It helps when they write their order for each course before we start and then I can translate it and be ready for when we begin.

Thursday we all had a very chill morning. I slept in, worked on a puzzle, ran to a thrift store where I found a bunch of Disney movies we didn't have. That afternoon Penny went to Mimi's house. Ben had been hoping to hang with Andrea that afternoon, but she ended up ditching him so I took him to Chuck E Cheese instead. I was grateful Lucy watched Ruby so I could go hang with him. We had fun playing arcade games together. When we got back from Chuck E Cheese Ben was complaining he had nothing to do so I told him he could go pick up Penny from Mimi's and he immediately said yes. I was shocked because I am so used to Steven who is never willing to do stuff like that. Having Ben as a driver is going to be pretty great.

Later that afternoon Lucy's friend Jenna came over for a sleepover. I took them to Target and then we all came home and made Peep houses (one of our newer traditions). I failed to invite Steven to make houses with us because he is always so negative about doing things with us (like he had no interest in going to Dave and Busters) but he came downstairs and seemed offended that we hadn't invited him. I think that really he had just wanted to eat the candy.

Friday Tyler had off work so we ran a couple errands together in the morning. Then that afternoon I took Jenna and Lucy to the rollerskating rink. Jenna's mom, Stacey, met us there and we chatted while the girls skated in circles. It is so loud at the roller skating rink so conversing with someone feels a bit like a chore- you have to speak louder than normal. So that drained me a bit but still it was nice to catch up with Stacey.

That evening the older 4 all did Baptisms at the Temple so Tyler, Ruby and I got some quality time together. We ended up going to another bookstore because I am obsessed with finding drawing books. Tyler was nice and watched Ruby so I could look at books. Then we went out for dinner at Chili's. Ruby was actually pretty well behaved and it was a nice meal out.

Saturday morning I had a few last minute Easter errands to run and then we watched General Conference at noon. Ruby felt everyone needed a bucket on their head in order to properly watch Conference. Steven pretty much slept on the floor the whole time. Maybe some of the messages are getting through his subconscious.

After the first session of conference we had Mimi over and Cherish's family over for an Easter Egg Hunt. I didn't do anything for the boys because I felt like their friends didn't really appreciate what I did last year. Although now I feel bad because Ben probably would have liked to have done something. The girls spread some Easter eggs out in the lawn for Ruby and Izzy to find. Ruby was finally old enough to enjoy hunting for eggs (as long as they weren't too hard to find).

Then I had an indoor scavenger hunt for the girls. They split into 2 teams. Penny, Mimi and Luna were team pink. Lucy and Geli were team Orange. I hid 10 paper clues/riddles around the house. Each clue/riddle led to the next one (fan, couch, pillow, etc). For each clue/riddle they solved, they got an Easter egg and the final clue took them a basket full of prizes from the Dollar Tree. Some clues were more challenging than others but overall I think it was the right amount of challenge and I think it was a nice way to change up our Easter Egg Hunts.

After they were done with that, the girls all hung out for a bit. We chatted with Cherish and Roberto and I got to see firsthand the challenges of having a special needs kid. Izzy is very full of joy and enthusiasm for all the things but she is also very needy and requires a lot of attention. Cherish is an amazing mom and I admire her patience with Izzy. They were very grateful to us for allowing their whole family to join us and I am glad we could do that for them,

After they left we watched the next session of General Conference. During the session Ruby played with her doll house and it was cute to see her have her toy figures knock on the door to the house and watch her let them in. 

Then that night, Tyler and I went over to Grace's for a couple's game night with the usual crew. The first game we played, What Do You Meme?, was not the best. I was losing big time which isn't that fun but not only were my cards not getting picked, but the cards I picked were getting insulted. It hurt my pride and I may have acted like a sore loser because of it. Not my favorite moment. Afterwards we played Itzi and things lightened up and felt more fun. Then we chatted for a long while about various things. Jason is really pushing doing some sort a night where we try gross foods- they want to call it a Dark Pot Luck. I think instead of gross foods, we should do weird foods that actually taste good We will see if anything ever pans out. Jason also got talking about a weird family at our church. One of the things I loved about our crew was the lack of gossiping because we run in different circles. I didn't love this change in conversation so I feel weird about the whole night but we did have some pretty good belly laughs during it. 

And I will end with an inappropriate Ruby story that I feel I should document... Lucy and Jenna were playing video games and Lucy shouted "What the butt!?" and Ruby in turn shouted "What the f**k!?" I would like to think that "butt" just came out wrong since we don't say that word in our house. It was defintely shocking to hear that come out of her little mouth.