Little chefs

My boys don't get home from school until almost 4:00 so from that time until nearly dinner we are working on homework and letting the boys have a little down time.  Unfortunately this leaves no time for them to help me in the kitchen.

Sundays are a different story though.  With 9:00 church I have plenty of time to let my boys help out.  They are the best potato peelers in the world.

After one Sunday dinner prep William had had such a great time that he temporarily changed his career aspirations from lego designer to chef.  He asked me to let him help out more so that he could learn for when he opened his own restaurant.  And if he doesn't become a chef?  At least he won't starve on his mission and at college!

James loves to set the table nice and fancy for our Sunday dinners as well. (Fancy = table cloth and glass cups for the boys.)  When I was little I always loved getting out the table cloths and nicer dishes on Sundays.  I'm glad that James does too.

I love my little kitchen helpers!

Spring Break

Spring break was the week following Easter Sunday.  Unfortunately I started to feel sick that Sunday night which threw a kink into all the great plans that we had made for the week!  Monday we were able to meet some friends at the park and have a good time.  However, by the time we got home I was wiped out and I napped for the rest of the afternoon with Henry and Alexander (who was still recovering from being sick).  William and James were such good boys and played outside for the rest of the afternoon.

We took it easy for the rest of the week--played around the house and watched movies.  (I even got enough energy on Tuesday to play a belated April Fool's joke on the boys by filling their cups up with jello so that when they went to drink it didn't move! They thought it was awesome!)

Since the boys all got seed packets in their Easter baskets we even started planting our seeds.  We decided to start them inside this year so we planted them in an egg carton.  We aren't great gardeners and every year that we plant seeds we forget what we planted where and are always surprised when things start growing!  I thought this would maybe help us keep track of them a little better.

The boys really loved filling each hole with soil and then picking which veggie/flower we would plant next. 

William has decided that he wants to help a lot with the garden and then try to sell the veggies to the neighbors so he can make some money.  (This was after I told him a story of how my sisters and I tried to have a veggie stand one summer.)  We'll see if we grow enough to let him do that!

Another day the boys decided to have a little picnic in the fort.

By Thursday it was raining so we had a picnic lunch indoors.

And rainy spring days wouldn't be complete without a fort in the family room.

Finally, on Friday I was feeling almost back to normal (aside from my allergies that kicked in!) so I decided we needed to get out and do something extra fun.  We have a museum pass that allows us into 3 different museums in the area.  We have visited 2 of them several times each but have never made it down to the nature museum.  William really wanted to go down there so that's where we went.  I didn't have any high expectations because I had heard that it was really small--but we loved it!

We saw an alligator...

and we loved the butterflies!

We couldn't resist this fun photo op.

There were tunnels to explore and water to splash in...

But I think we all agreed that the outside exhibit was our very favorite.  There was a sandbox and teepees.  Wheelbarrows and hiking trails.  It was awesome!

We finished off the week by watching General Conference.  What a wonderful way to end our break.

I loved this picture that William drew about the tomato plant from Elder Ballard's talk.

It ended up being a good week... even if illness caused us to slow down just a bit.

Easter

Easter was a little crazy this year.  We never even got around to dying eggs!  So sad.  (I did boil a dozen though so I've slowly been eating them...)  The Easter bunny showed up on Saturday (as usual).  The boys had a great time finding their baskets and hunting for eggs in the backyard.

Henry quickly discovered that there were treats in the eggs.  So the older boys did all the work of finding the eggs and Henry stood near where the eggs were being deposited and eat the treats.  Smart boy.

It didn't take long for them to find all of the eggs.  And I thought the Easter bunny was extra generous this year!  Perhaps he'll have to be trickier at hiding next year.

William kept calling this little chick a "peep."  I'm glad that he was so excited about it since he didn't get real peeps.  And it makes me happy that he isn't too big for cute stuff like that.  I know that the day is coming soon.  (It's really really hard to find stuff that isn't "cute" or pastel for Easter baskets!  Poor Easter bunny!)

The older boys all got bubbles and had a great time outside playing with them.  Good thing it was such a nice day!

You may have noticed that Alexander is absent from all of the pictures.  Poor little boy was asleep on the couch.  He had been sick all week long and still wasn't feeling himself.  Not even an Easter egg hunt could get him up!  So I grabbed his basket and brought it for him to look at.

Easter Sunday we got the boys up and went to church.  Poor Alex still looked sick but Rich and I both had to teach so he came anyway!

And just for fun... here's our Easter outtakes.

We spent the rest of the day watching The Lamb of God and eating a delicious Easter ham.