Alex played his last soccer game of his first season today. Lucy also completed her last gymnastics class until July. So many things are about to get really crazy as we prepare Brianna for her mission. She comes home tomorrow night, and we are all SO excited! Niki sent me these great pictures from yesterday:Niki is one of the most amazing people I know. She helped pick Brie up from school……get her entire apartment all packed up……and then took her to get her wisdom teeth out. She and Savannah took such good care of her! Savannah even made Brie a special menu of all they bought to help her recover. I could not be more blessed to have such an amazing sister in law to help my daughter when I cannot be there.Khaliyah knows Brie is coming home. She NEVER does this. I guess she already has plans of things to do with Brie. 🤣After games and gymnastics, I snuck out and grabbed some Krispy Kreme’s! Haven’t had them in such a long time!Now we wait until tomorrow night. 😊

So… I received some great tips for focusing on a moving Lucy this afternoon from my photography group. I decided to take Lu for a walk to the pond to casually try them out and see if my focus would improve.

Yeah, it did not. I just don’t know where I am going wrong. People get beautiful pictures of toddlers smiling ALL the time! I am not giving up yet though. Lucy’s pictures sure tell her story! And rarely (for now!), I do get a fairly good smile pic. 🙂I’ll take this one for the day! ❤

Taking pictures has made me realize that my perfectionism of things is more than a camera is capable of! I have figured out that I want my camera to take a picture so well that little to no editing needs to be done to call the picture great. Nice thought, but I now realize that most professional photographers spend hours editing their photos. Having that said however, a blurry picture can really get no help. That is honestly my biggest problem! I can get fabulous pictures of Lucy not looking at the camera, but if she is going to smile, it is almost ALWAYS blurry!!! UGHH! She has the biggest, most brilliant smiles too! I hate that I cannot capture a great one in focus! I think I will start a page just of blurry smile pictures. One day someone will invent the fix for them that will look like a real in focus smile picture. But for now, it is my curse! These beautiful pictures came after our horrendous night last night. The flowers were incredible, and Lucy was up to her usual storytelling and singing in them. The sun was at its brightest though, so Lucy’s eyes were squinting in several. I can also tell I gave my camera quite a challenge finding a focal point when I plopped a toddler in the middle of a million brightly colored blooms. It is what it is for now. Birthday pics are in full swing, so there will be more to come. 🙂 

Oh Boy! I could CRY! I was suppose to take Lucy’s pictures today in her birthday dress. I looked at so many different fields the past few weeks to try and find the perfect one for her pictures. Rain and cold kept us from doing them last week, and then today, as I was picking up Natalie from school, I noticed that they had JUST mowed the field we were suppose to go to TODAY! I had worked all day on her outfit. I was sick! I knew of another field past downtown Wylie that had some flowers too, but it was not quite as desirable. It was going to have to do, so I thought. Until we got there! Lucy looked like an absolute princess. She had just woken up from a nap, though, late! I should have known the bad luck was just going to finish out the day. Lucy screamed the entire time I tried to take her pictures. It was AWFUL! Not only did Sam get home late from work, so we were late starting and quickly losing our light source, also the flowers were closing up and every little everything made Lucy upset. Her Chair. Her Shoes. The Grass. The Light. We did not get a single picture. I even thought after singing with her, letting her take her own flower pictures, clearing a whole patch of the field so it was free of any plants, letting her sit on my soft squishy camera bag, and showing her funny Lucy falling over in bluebonnets videos, she still screamed the second I tried to put her down. We both left extremely frustrated. Tonight, I just need a cool down night. Maybe I can try again before the week is over, and she’ll actually be in a happy mood. We are going to quickly run out of fields very soon when the warmer weather stays around!

This big brother is amazing! She definitely thinks so too! 😊❤️

For the record, I did NOT train her like this! 😂

For their birthdays, I got the boys tickets to go see Monster Jam in Austin this weekend. William and Alex have wanted to go for years, but it comes to Dallas in February, which is always a crazy month. They had a great time!They even got to watch Grave Digger get stuck in a wheelie. He needed a forklift to get him righted. While they were have fun, the girls and I went out to dinner and to the mall. Natalie even overcame her teenager “Too Cool” pride and jumped on the carousel with me and Lucy.Thank goodness we were able to eventually convince Lucy to get off to see something else. That could have gotten really ugly. 😬She found her happy place in the Disney Store. Everything was loads of excitement for her! Too bad they were closing when we made it there.Lucy found a Belle doll and an Olaf that she would NOT let us put back.We were so fortunate to have an amazing cast member offer her an Ana, Elsa, and Olaf sticker instead, to trade for the dolls. She was So incredibly sweet, Lucy gave in and turned over Belle and Olaf. Now we have a good idea of a birthday gift. 😏

I am beginning to wonder if Lucy’s hair is EVER going to grow longer! It seems like we have been at this length forever! Today, I just gave up trying to make her headbands look less ridiculous and attempted to pull up her hair on top. What little bit she had made a cute little sprig. 🤣We got to show it off at storytime. Roger and Ms. Debbie even noticed. 😊I LOVE how Lucy is beginning to smile when I ask her to now. Sometimes it is the total “Cheese!” smile, but that is better than her running away, or the back of her head.

We sure have great luck of bringing the rain to the Arboretum! I have really wanted to take my mom to the Arboretum since we bought our season passes. Since the kids were off of school today, I was hoping for great weather. We took a gamble with rain in the forecast. It didn’t end quite in our favor, but we still had fun for the short time we were there. We went to mist gardens first.At first Lu tried to jump right into the flowers. 😱 (She still had bluebonnet fields on her mind! 😜) We had to explain to her that these were special gardens and we had to stay on the paths. Lucy loved all the squirrels darting in and out of the flowers. She kept making Natalie stop to watch them.The boys loved looking for evidence of bugs, minus mosquitoes, bees, wasps, or spiders for William. Alex found a beautiful spider’s web, coated in raindrops. William found a spider’s molt.I guess William couldn’t escape the spiders completely. 😜

Lucy ran off into the vegetable garden area, and discovered multiple squirrels munching away. It was like her little piece of squirrel chasing heaven. Poor things.

We came out of the vegetable area to the reflection pools. Luckily we were able to keep Lu from going in head first. She sure tried! We also had to keep her from trying to sit on the flowers that lined the pools. She thought they were meant for sitting IN! 😳Lucy shared the water with me and my pant legs, and Nana shared pennies with her and the other kids.She was amazed at how they splashed. (Proud of myself for getting it in the photo. 😁)When we left the pools, that is when the skies opened! It wasn’t long before we were pretty drenched! Reminds me of our trip with the Taylers last summer. 😂 We will go back soon though. The Arboretum is fabulous!“What? I didn’t do anything!” 😏

Today was such a wonderful Easter! Probably one of my favorites. We have church fairly early in the morning. So even though the kids got their Easter baskets before church, they were forbidden to eat any Easter candy until after lunch. Sitting through 3 hours of church is hard enough without sugar. Sacrament was really nice. I missed the first bit because I forgot to wash the nursery cups this past week. Natalie helped me in the kitchen when we first arrived. The Waltmans both gave beautiful talks. Brother Waltman’s dad just passed away. It was very neat to see how they related his death to importance of Easter, and how Easter is for EVERYONE! Not only those that are living, but those that have died, and also those that have yet to come. Life on Earth is but a short moment in the big scheme of things. In nursery, we had a FABULOUS time! The kids are WONDERFUL! We had 9 today! We had an excellent lesson on Jesus, and it was so wonderful to see how interested the kids were in the lesson. And people say toddlers have no patience! So not true! Rachel did a great job with singing too. These kids LOVE to sing! After church, we came home, quickly changed our clothes, and dyed Easter eggs. We did it outdoors this year. (Great idea because Lu sure knows how to make a mess! 😉)

Once all our eggs were colored ( ☹️ I forgot to take a picture of our finished eggs!) , the kids played with the Cascarones eggs, celebration eggs for new life, Jesus’ resurrection!

Lucy really got into throwing confetti all over herself. Khaliyah enjoyed catching it, or running off with the broken eggs. After celebrations at home, it was time to go to Grandma and Grandpa’s. The kids had been asking for weeks when it was time to go visit again! They were soooooo excited! We were sad that the Heaths were not able to make it. The kids really love as much time with their cousins as they can get. Hopefully we will get to see them soon! Grandma cooked a delicious dinner for us all, and then had an Easter egg hunt. Boy the kids are fast! It takes a half an hour to hide eggs, but only a few minutes for them to find them.

Natalie ended up with both golden eggs. Alex got all the other sparkle eggs with dollars in them. I think the kids have enough treats to last them the rest of the year! Before the mosquitoes made dinner of us all, Alex and Lu swung on the swings. This dolphin swing was Brianna’s 6mo birthday gift. It is still in fabulous condition, and all of our other kids have loved swinging in it at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. Who knows! Maybe Brianna or Nate’s kids will swing in it too. Grandpa just repainted the set, and rebuilt the glider. The swingset was his from when he was a little boy. You can definitely say that they built things better, and to last, years ago. Everything nowadays is so disposable and breaks in no time! So glad we have these few special things to make generations of memories with!

We ended our evening with ice cream and treats, then playing games inside. It was a wonderful way to finish a very special day. Happy Happy Easter!