Easter

Another Easter has come and gone. I keep thinking this will be the last holiday Noah will believe, but he just keeps on believing. Although, he is coming up with more questions. Emily found out in sixth grade, Ben was fifth, so I thought Noah would be fourth since the youngest always grows up quicker.

In any case, Easter is the one holiday that we host at our house. Emily helped out by filling the deviled eggs.

 

The kids dyed eggs and we watched Charlie Brown Easter Beagle the night before. I'm glad they aren't too old and cool to do stuff like this with their family.

The baskets wouldn't fit in the baskets this year.

Noah got a slime kit after about 20 failed attempts at making slime at home.

Suzy made the jelly bean cake and Nikki made the cheesecake. Talk about impressive!  I heated up a ham!  HA!

Mike is giving my Dad a phone lesson. He got a new phone and can't figure it out.

Me and my pops.

Me and my sweet Mama. I always think I look more like my Dad's side, but I think I look just like my Mom here.  I'm a chameleon.

Suzy brought a few of their neighbors. A lot are snowbirds and don't have family here. This is Ruth. She is a sassy doll.

This is her husband Don. They are working on 66 years of marriage!

This is the other neighbor Jan. She is just the sweetest person. I'm glad my Dad and Suzy have such awesome neighbors.

My Mom and little Tammy dog. That dog is spoiled!

Here's Suzy and Nikki with their amazing cakes.

Nikki looking like a cute bunny!

And that was the whole gang. It was so nice to all get together. Ruth and Jan remarked about what a loving family we have, and we do. Not many families can have ex wives and step children and the whole hodge podge that we are and all get along. We are very fortunate.

Guard Championships

Emily's guard team had a little show last week at Prescott high school. They are going to have a Spring Recital in a few weeks, so we will all go to that, but I got to go see her perform their show. I'll have to get video of it at some point.

But, here are a few pictures of their warm up and performance. I love the beams on the ceiling at this high school.

I know Emily has gotten so close with all these kids.

They had their final championships last weekend and they placed second in their division. They had a big team dinner after and they've had a great season.

But, they aren't quite done. They still have practices twice a week. Honestly, I think Em was exhausted last week. School is 35 hours a week, and she had guard practice and performances for 35 hours a week, with one of the days being 19 hours! It's like she had a 70 hour week! I'm glad they've tapered off to practice twice a week, and she can recoup a bit and do a final push on her school work.

It's been a great year for her, and I'm so proud of her and all she accomplished in guard.

Bread Obsessed

Noah had a big assembly at school a few weeks ago.  All of the 4th, 5th and 6th grade students got to learn how to make bread. Then, they all took home flour, yeast and a recipe. The assignment was to make 2 loaves of bread. One you keep. The other you return and they bring to the salvation army to feed the homeless. Sounds like a great idea!

He couldn't wait to make the bread.

We decided for our half of the dough that we would make a small loaf of bread and some cinnamon rolls.

I don't have a picture of the finished product. Probably because it went in the garbage too quickly. It was nasty. It was too dense and just blah. It wasn't anything we did in the baking process. It all worked out fine. We just didn't like the recipe. We sent the one loaf to school and that was that.

But, Noah became obsessed. He watched you tube videos and he found a bread recipe that he thought would be much better. So, the following weekend, we got to work and made a loaf of bread. He said it's on this You Tube channel called "Everyday". And then it hit me, you mean Martha Stewart Everyday? And he's like yep, some old lady. Oh my gosh, he's in love with the Martha Stewart channel.

And let me just say, Martha's recipe was on point! The bread came out fluffy and delicious. Noah was brushing butter on at the end.

We literally ate 2/3 of the loaf when it came out of the oven. It was so tasty.

So, Noah went back on the Everyday channel and found chocolate chip cookies and rolls and cinnamon roll recipes. Oh vay. I'm going to gain 100 pounds. But, as Martha would say, "It's a good thing", so I'm just going to go with it.