What we did the week before Easter

We returned late Saturday night from a wonderful trip to Missouri to visit Ellefsens and reluctantly jumped squarely back into a hectic week.  These are some of the things that happened that week:

Dan - got off the plane and, in between helping unpack, do laundry, and grab groceries, started preparing Seminary lessons for the coming week. 

Aubrey - is in the final two weeks of her play Into the Woods. Before Spring Break she had rehearsals 3-4 days a week. On Monday she began daily afterschool practices until 9 p.m. and all day Saturday. This has/will continue(d) for 3 more weeks, except now rehearsal ends at 10 p.m. and performance days (Thursday, Friday and Saturday of this week and next week) she won't be home until 11 p.m.  This is a lot of driving on my part - at this point my car could probably find its way to and from her school without my assistance.

Joseph -is continuing soccer practices and games. The day before Easter I was at the beauty school with Bailey who was getting a prom updo while Dan was at a soccer game with Joseph. It rained so hard that the kids looked like they had jumped in a pool. But in Washington they never cancel soccer for mere rain! 

This week he also began practices for flag football, which he is trying for the first time. He had the same coach a few years ago for soccer and two of his buddies are on the team. After every practice they are muddy!

Tiffany - early morning Monday I was at our church building to start helping with the setup for our stake's annual Life of Christ event. It is so amazing - I can't even describe how unique and elaborate this event is. This is the first year I was the main person in charge of my area (in the past I was a helper in the same area). It was much more time intensive to be the "person in charge," and it still makes me tired to think about that week. I was at the church setting up (putting together the tomb, shoveling dirt, moving rocks, placing arts and plants, etc.) all day every day that week. On Saturday (the night before Easter) I was at the church until midnight, taking down the exhibit.

I was going to add pictures from this year but for some reason can't find them on my computer. So,  moving on.

Bailey - jumped back into preparation for her 4 AP tests and infinitely more fun preparations for Prom. Before we left out of town she had ordered a custom prom dress online from a company based in China. For a really great deal (half the price of most prom dresses) she was able to get a dress which fit her body and was really well made. We don't want to think about what kind of wage the seamstresses were paid to sew the dress. The package from China arrived when we were out of town, so she was excited to try it on.  It looked beautiful.

But she felt like it needed something to give it more "bling." On Wednesday afternoon Bailey and I did a "power shop" at the mall. We looked for (cheap) blingy jewelry, sparkly shoes, and other necessities to make her look her very best. We also borrowed the sash from the dress she bought for Brandon and Angela's wedding. 

But, more about Prom in a separate post.  Bailey also immediately  began preparations for her campaign for senior class activities director: posters, Tshirts, a speech, etc.

And there is a snapshot of our slightly crazy but wonderful life.  Now I need to go run to my exercise class!

The Easter celebration that almost wasn't

We had a busy week last week. The kind of week that had us staggering to the finish line and exhausted at the thought of Monday coming again so soon.  I'm going to let that fact take the blame for our pathetic Easter celebration.  

Before I list some of the things that kept us so busy during the week, I'll describe our Easter Sunday.

7 a.m. - In the interest of neighborly camaraderie, I dragged myself out of bed after getting to bed very late and threw together some breakfast-type food to take to the annual early morning Easter egg hunt held in our cul-de-sac.

8 a.m. - I tried to get family members to get up, but they were all also very tired, and only Dan and Joseph slowly made their way downstairs. In the meantime, some neighborhood kids knocked on the door to tell us that we were late and were holding up everyone's egg hunt. We made it across the street almost half an hour late.  Joseph found his 9 eggs and we talked to neighbors for a bit and then headed back to the house.

Joseph was the only kid who really cared about what was in his Easter basket. Coincidentally, he is the only kid who has a picture of himself by his Easter basket. He received a furry bear friend he has dubbed "Lee Bear."  Lee Bear likes to read, snuggle, and just hang out amiably.

10:50 a.m. - We careened out of the house toward the church building, almost late but with everyone awake and dressed for church. We did not, however, have time to take an Easter morning picture of everyone in their finery. It's the first time in the history of our family that we haven't taken an Easter morning picture. I told everyone we are taking one next week and pretending it is Easter.

2:30 p.m. - Home from church. Dan stumbled up the stairs and collapsed on the bed, oblivious to the need for food. I threw a few random food items at children in the vicinity and then staggered up to bed as well. In fact, everyone was asleep in short order (except for poor Bailey, who had been so busy all weekend she hadn't addressed the homework for her 4 AP classes, so she spent the afternoon studying).  Joseph actually fell asleep face down on the floor. Do you think we were all a little tired??

6:40 p.m. - I opened my eyes slowly, wondering where and who I was. It took a few minutes for me to realize that we had slept the day away. We had slept EASTER afternoon away. And, sadly, no nice little elves had cooked us our Easter dinner. We also hadn't done anything else Easter-related the entire week, so we had several must-do traditions still on the docket for the evening. 

The night before Easter I had arrived home past midnight and Dan and I then assisted the Easter bunny by hunting down our Easter baskets in the garage. Luckily, we set out the baskets in time for the bunny to fill them with candy, books, and a few small gifts. 

In the week before Easter we did manage to focus our scripture study on the Savior's last week before His crucifixion and resurrection.  We also covered the fireplace with pictures of Jesus and watched some fantastic movies about Christ's life earlier in the week.


7:00 p.m. - Now wide awake and slightly panicked as the sun was beginning to set, I quickly dumped out the candy from everyone's plastic Easter eggs and stuffed them with coins. Then I threw the eggs out in the backyard and summoned the kids for the traditional family egg hunt in the backyard. Excited about the prospect of some extra coins for the piggy bank, Joseph and Aubrey joined me for the hunt.

 Joseph was the lucky one who found pesos from Mexico mixed into the coins in his egg. Oops!

We pulled together a passably decent Easter dinner with impressive speed, and at 8:00 p.m. we finally sat down to eat. 

Joseph was in charge of decorating the table, and he did a great job, even making "Happy Easter" signs for each place setting.

 We call this the "Logan Ellefsen smile." When I finally get the Missouri pictures posted, it will be clear why that is the case!  

 Bailey was at the table too but declined to be captured in a photo.

 Ham, potatoes, various fruits and veggies, rosemary garlic bread, and strawberry shortcake for dessert!

During dinner we had a really fun gospel discussion, with the kids all posing questions they have been wondering about. I love those kind of discussions.

Finally dinner was done and more or less cleaned up, and at 
9:30 p.m. on Easter evening we colored Easter eggs. Why bother at that point?  So we could take a picture of it, of course, and so our 9 year old didn't feel cheated.

And now, I have so much more to say about our busy week but this post is getting ridiculously long. So I'll start fresh with a new post. 

Here's to Easter 2014, a year in which we didn't do everything perfectly, but did focus on what really matters . . . our Savior Jesus Christ and our family.

March

And, a few random March (non birthday) events:

I have been patting myself on the back for being the mean Mom who requires children to take piano lessons, drives them to uncounted lessons over the years, and calmly ignores their protests and pleas to stop lessons. All of the kids love music, and lately some beautiful solos and duets are happening in our house!

When Brandon lived at home we had a birthday celebration every St. Patrick's Day, but now that he is off on his own we aren't able to party with him.  Instead, we had a special St. Patrick's Day dinner. When Joseph saw me preparing the green food, he decided that we needed to have a Porter Restaurant, and he would be the very official looking maitre'd.  He set up a table to greet guests, complete with a plant, a notebook to track availability at the tables, and a bell to ring.

February

A roundup of some of our February 2014 activities:

One or two Battle of the Books competitions per week for Joseph:

Basketball games every Friday night for Joseph, in which we were able to see him put into practice many of the new basketball skills he has worked so hard on:

Next in the Birthday Month lineup, Joseph's actual birthday (two weeks after his birthday party)

Joseph's birthday started very early in the morning for me. I remembered during the night that he had requested white powdered donuts as part of his birthday meal (which also included strawberries, muffins, and bacon.) I had forgotten to buy the oh-so-important donuts, so after I got Dan and Bailey off to Seminary I dashed over to the nearby Minit Mart and grabbed an incredibly overpriced package of donuts.

And, it turns out, the Franz brand donuts are not nearly as preferred by the Porter kids as is the Hostess brand. Thus, my early morning donut run was in vain and no one ate them.

I think this next series of pictures is funny. We brought in Joseph's tray of food and sang him happy birthday and then I started taking some pictures. First it looked like he couldn't even open his eyes.