Easter Party in the Park

We go to the park every Wednesday morning with some ward friends and since it's Easter we decided to have a little Easter party while we were there. It was low key but tons of fun!  I should've taken pictures of the food, but you'll just have to picture it :) We had egg shaped PB&J sandwiches, bunny shaped egg salad sandwiches, celery with peanut butter and raisins, chips, fruit and little decorations on the table. After the kids played, we had a little egg hunt and there were puzzles pieces hidden in some of them, so they got to put the puzzle together too. Lots of fun! Thanks everyone for the planning!

Smiling at the bubbles

Getting ready to go hunting

Found one!

Going through eggs, looking for puzzle pieces

One piece was missing, but it's still obvious that the puzzle is
Christ.  What Easter's really all about!

Favorite March Pictures

As many pictures as there are here, I think I did a pretty good job at weeding out my favorites! Now you can see our month in review!

Feeding Daddy our homemade cherry vanilla frozen yogurt mix.

Baby Shower goods that I got to work on! Love sewing projects! Easy ones that is :)

 Disney/Universal trip

packing up for Orlando

Waiting for our bus. Brayden was so excited that he got to ride on a bus!!

 St. Patty's Day!
We had a pretty typical day, but we went to Beef O' Brady's for dinner and they had a bounce house and face painting for free! It was so fun! Brayden loved it!!

Green shamrock pancakes

Stopped for dessert on our way home :)

  My mom was with us for a couple weeks and got to hear me speak in church one Sunday. These are from when we got home. It was past Brayden's naptime, so it was tough getting a good one, but it's not bad!

playing games!

Zander's thrilled that he gets to hold the phone. haha. Confession: he does know how to work one app on our iPod already: Peek-a-boo barn. 

Loves his food!!

Brayden with the "Big Phone" as he called it. (really the iPad)

 The mall Playground
we go every now and then when Preston has late class and I want to entertain/wear out the kids. Zander loves the slide and if I set him at the top he'll scoot himself backwards and down the slide. Haha.

 Yard Work. The bandanas are for keeping their heads cool, but I think they look super cute too!!

We found this guy in our house one night.

Our current yard situation. Lovely, right?

handsome kiddo!

Our General Conference Weekend

I was really excited for Conference this time. The most excited I've been since having children I'm sure. I knew I still wouldn't be able to sit and listen to the whole thing undistracted, but this time I was determined to teach Brayden about it and share my love for the prophet and apostles. As I got excited to teach him I got really excited to hear the prophet myself!! After the first session (maybe two) I was kinda bummed because Brayden didn't seem as into it as I had pictured and we didn't get to watch any part of conference without at least one child. Nap times just didn't work out like they should've. But, Preston reminded me that my effort was good and not to be discouraged. So come day 2 of conference I was ready for another shot!

Previously in our home, we had an FHE about when King Benjamin spoke to the Nephites and they gathered their families together in tents to hear him. So, we built our own little fort/tent in our Study to watch conference in. Brayden's reaction to the fort: "Woooow." Starting Monday I had been showing him pictures of all the apostles and first Presidency to help him learn their names and he could sing their names to the same tune as the Books in the Book of Mormon are sung to. I didn't do a good job in preparing him for my treat idea, but we did have jelly beans that were out of reach, but available if Brayden listened and heard the speakers talk about Jesus Christ. So, back to conference....

Come Sunday sessions, Brayden was pretty ready for a nap when it was going to start at noon but we let him stay up for a little because he was so excited that we were all going to go watch more "prophet show" as he called it. Presiden Eyring conducted the first session and when Brayden saw him he pointed and yelled "EYRING! There he is!" You can only imagine how happy my heart was to hear that! Precious. We put Brayden to bed after the first speaker I think, but he was up for the next session.  When the session started, Brayden asked "more Eyring?" Then the songs started and we saw Preston's dad in the choir and told Brayden "there's Grandpa!" He must not have actually seen his grandpa, because every time the camera would show a male shot of the choir and there was a grey haired, glasses wearing man Brayden would shout - "Bapa! There he is!" haha. In fact, one of the speakers from the 70 who spoke Brayden called grandpa too. Haha. What I really loved was how enthusiastic he was about finding the apostles all throughout the session and even when I didn't think he was listening at all, he'd suddenly say "Jesus Christ. Jellybean!" And the speakers really had said Jesus every time! So, even when he was playing on my phone or fishing through Zander's toys, he could be listening too.  Both days of conference he really enjoyed putting a sticker on the picture of the speaker when it was one of the apostles or first Presidency (because those are the pictures we had for him). And he got very excited when he could recognize someone.

I'm just so filled with joy at how enthusiastic Brayden was with Conference in the end! And I'm also filled with urgency to alter a few habits of mine and create some new ones. Conference leaves me with a mix of determination, joy, peace and also a nice to do list. But, I love it!

Hope you got to watch and if not, go check it out!!