Easter Week 2009

Catch up time again...

I'll be writing a few posts about some of the fun things we did during Easter Week this year. It was a special week for us for so many reasons. Always remembering Christ's death on the cross in order to bring us life AND his resurrection from the dead showing the grave could not hold him is an awe-filled thing to celebrate.

This Easter also marked the first time our whole family was able to travel down to Iowa to visit my extended family since LAST Easter! It was a LONG over-due trip! :)

The weekend preceding Easter the kids and spent some time coloring Easter eggs. We loved it, and they loved eating them later too! Here are some pics and videos!

PS - take note of Laura & John's longer hair in these photos...in some later Easter related posts you will see their spring haircuts!

Side Note: Juancho had been growing out his hair virtually all year in the hopes to achieve the 'skater hair' that his cousin Joel pulls off so well. But with Juancho's courser hair, it just seemed to get 'puffier'. I was more than fine with his decision to get it cut off...whew! :)

PJ's Revenge

You've certainly been introduced to PJ on this blog before. PJ is our loveable canine protector - our 3.5 year old mutt - we think a German Shepherd/Golden Retriever mix. But he was also an adoption...a pet adoption and before the Humane Society found him, he was a street dog - so there is no telling what his heritage really is. But he truly is a wonderful dog. We got him about a year before our kiddos joined our family...but he handled the additions to the "pack" with ease.

Here's PJ:

As you can see below, he feels quite comfortable being a member of our "pack" (and is less than modest...sorry!)And though he is so cute - he is not immune to getting in trouble sometimes!
Having 3 other pack members that are under 18, and two of those being girls, PJ has endured his fair share of being dressed-up, serving as a surrogate "baby", attempts to be ridden like a horse, and more. He has handled it with ease......until this past weekend that is. This past weekend we discovered "PJ's Revenge!"

Somehow Angie's toys suffered the brunt of the damage. Though PJ isn't usually a 'chewer', he did a complete lobotomy on the pink bear (Angie still doesn't know about that one...she loves that pink "bearie" and will not take it well when she learns about his demise). We didn't even know about the Barbie until we came home from Monsters vs. Aliens on Saturday and found a large pile of dog vomit on the area rug (thankfully a small one I can toss in the laundry). He had all sorts of unidentifiable things in it. A search of the girls bedroom turned up the completely destroyed Barbie! Both legs gone - up to the belly button! Both arms chewed off from the elbow down! PJ certainly had some pent up frustration he decided to let go on pink bearie and poor old Barbie! (As a side note though, so far this incident has seemed to help the girls remember to be better about keeping their toys picked up!)

Our High School Musical 3 STARS!

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Earth Hour

I learned an ingenious thing from my friend and fellow blogger Erica at Little Townhouse on the Prairie...that I can write multiple blog posts at once and then schedule them to post at a certain time on a certain day! WooHoo! This may solve all my blogging challenges! See, I LOVE to blog - it is a way of recording the 'goings on' of our family - I hope to transfer these memories into a book format someday (maybe just one of those books you can make on Blurb.com (I won a voucher to make a FREE book recently...yay!) - not necessarily Barnes and Noble...but maybe...who knows?!) - so it is important to me to remember to capture these memories! But I struggle to find time every day to blog. But usually once a week I can carve out a chunk of time to write multiple posts. And how much better is it for my readers to get regular posts rather than 7 or 8 that dump on the same day? I love it! I'm in the midst of writing a number of posts that I'm scheduling for this week...we'll see how this goes! :)

EARTH HOUR...

Did you know yesterday was the nation-wide celebration of "Earth Hour"? This was a new concept for me, but I saw it advertised in a number of magazines, on MSN.com, and on TV. It is sponsored by WWF (no, not wrestling...that has 3 W's...I always get that mixed up!). WWF is World Wildlife Federation. WWF's tagline is "WWF's ultimate goal is to build a future where people live in harmony with nature."

The purpose behind Earth Hour is to take an hour to turn off lights and all other electronic equipment possible in the home and spend an hour doing activities together that did not require using electricity. WWF designated the official Earth Hour as from 8:30 to 9:30 PM on Saturday, March 28, 2009. Since our kiddos are in bed by then, our Earth Hour was from 7:00 to 8:00 on 3/28 instead.

While I'm not some super earthy granola momma girl, I do resonate with the importance of taking care of our environments and nature. In the beginning God created us to live in harmony with nature...and I believe the steps we can take to conserve and keep the environment in mind as we go about our lives, the better!

I'm always looking for good tangible ways to teach these truths to our children too, so when I heard about Earth Hour, I thought it would be a great way to talk about being Earth-friendly and conserving energy for the kids too!

I looked online for ideas of activities to do with children in observance of Earth Hour, but came up short. So I resorted to using my own creativity (sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't!). Our Earth Hour looked like this:

6:45 PM - I explained to the kiddos about Earth Hour and we had a discussion about what it meant to save energy. We had a discussion about what uses energy and how some appliances still use energy even when they are turned off! We also talked about how leaving things plugged into the wall that aren't being used (ie - phone and camera chargers) also wastes energy).

7:00 PM - The children did an Electricty Saving Scavenger Hunt through the house. The goal was to find anything that was using energy that didn't need to (ie - lights, chargers, empty air fresheners, items that were turned on but not in use like radios, DVD players, etc). I confess that shortly before starting I went through the house and turned on a few extra things to make the game a bit more fun. The kids loved it! While they went through the house I finished using the last bit of energy before we started our hour - warming up leftovers for dinner.

7:15 PM - To make dinner a bit more fun we spread a tablecloth out on the living room floor, lit a bunch of taper candles and set out our plates and food. Dinner was a lesson in conserving and not wasting too - we warmed up all the eligible leftovers in the fridge and got to help ourselves to what we wanted. The selection included pasta bake, meatloaf, pizza, pancakes and corn on the cob! The kids (and parents!) really enjoyed our Earth Hour dinner!

7:45 PM - It was starting to get darker outside now. We decided to go on a walk around our neighborhood and during our walk to pick up any garbage we saw along the way. The kids LOVED this! We talked about how this was another way to be friendly to the Earth - by cleaning up garbage that wasn't in a trash can - even if we didn't throw the garbage on the ground to begin with...and then discussed how we should make sure that we never throw our own garbage on the ground!

8:15 PM - We got back home after our walk - with a little grocery size bag FILLED with garbage that had been picked up along the way. Going inside we were able to turn on lights again - but even so, the children showed to be more diligent in only turning on lights in rooms they were in, and turning them off again when they left.

Here are some photos and a video (if I can get it to load) from our Earth Hour fun! I gotta get upstairs and check out the Lego competition that just began between Juancho and his Dad!

Our BreakDancers

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They Made The NEWS!

The last post was about the Daddy/Daughter Dance that Robert and Laura attend together back in late February. We recently learned that they actually made the news about it! Not the national news...or even the State news...but the local Shakopee, MN news! :)

Click on the link below...about 20 seconds into the video, you'll see Robert and Laura dancing the night away (along with our friend Boyd & his daughter Rachel). I tease Robert that he must have practiced long and hard on those dance moves...they are so complex! ;) Love ya honey!

They had a great time...will definitely do it again!

DADDY/DAUGHTER DANCE VIDEO

Daddy/Daughter Dance

I've been lax with my "two posts per month" goal!

Saturday night (2/21) was the Daddy/Daughter Dance through our local community education group. Robert and Laura went, along with our good friend Boyd and his daughter Rachel (who happens to be Laura's best friend!).

The girls were so excited to be going on a 'date' with their Daddy! Laura admitted she was a bit nervous to be dancing in front of other people, but super excited to get dressed up and treated to a special evening with her Dad.

Laura wore her Easter dress for this year - a beautiful yellow & white dress she got from her cousin Abby. Since it is still very much winter here, she paired this sleeveless dress with a cute white cardigan. She even got some new white shoes for the occasion (she definitely needed some!).

Robert surprised Laura with a wristlet corsage complete with yellow and white roses. Laura and I went through my jewelry stash and picked out a necklace that would be just perfect for the occasion. Laura was just beaming...she was loving getting dressed up, getting doted on by her Papi and having a special evening just for herself!

From what I understand the evening was a blast! The girls enjoyed dinner with their Daddy's, won some prizes and danced too! Laura is already talking about what she wants to do on her NEXT date night with Daddy. Here are some pics of the night...