Easter

Our Easter weekend was full of family, food, church and fun!  I've been singing "Christ the Lord has risen today....aaaaaaleluuuia" for weeks and this was finally the weekend!  He has risen!  Our church had a special chior sing yesterday and they did such an amazing job....I wish I could hear that every morning.  The worthington Trumans came for an enjoyable dinner and both our children were in bed and asleep by 7:30!  Yahoo!  A great end to a wonderful weekend....we are blessed.

Hannah and Jonah preparing for the neighborhood egg hunt, they love holding hands and smiling...doesn't it look so natural?

Jonah came home with just about every major prize for the 0-3yr olds, including the huge "Bunny Dude" who's face had melted off in the sun.

Jonah in action

hannah giving her new flip flops and sun glasses a try

Our pretty Easter dinner table

mmmmm....blueberry pound cake with a chocolate glaze

jonah and hadley

hadley and aunt amanda

hannah and olivia

olivia and uncle jay

Play time

With all this rain, we've been stuck inside again.  But, we've been making the most of it with tea parties and pet shops.

Bella ate everyone's cookie but mine....I'm too fast

This was our "Pet Shop" which ended up being so much fun.  Jonah and Hannah took turns being the pet shop owner as I walked around shopping for a new pet.  They sold animals, food, specific books for the pet's bedtime, stuffed animals for the pets and on and on and on.....!

The pet shop owner himself

The pet shop assistant making new signs for the store

and it's all about Meeeeeeeee

For those of you who know the melody, feel free to sing along to the title of this blog ;-)

I wanted to share how wonderful my birthday weekend was!!

I don't really remember how I felt about birthdays when I was little but they mean the world to my jonah boy.  Hannah typically follows his lead so birthdays are almost as important to her.  By "important" I mean that every other sentence out of their mouths mentions someone's birthday, the type of cake they might want, where the party should be, who's birthday is next, etc, etc.  So, my birthday celebration started early in the week with special drawings and kisses from each of them.

Then, on Thursday, aunt jilly came to eat dinner with the kids and put them to bed so doug and I could go out on a date.  That's right, a DATE!  Whoo HOOO!  We had dinner at Figlio, followed by a cup of joe at Stauffs, some plant shopping at Oakland nursery and then a night cap at a local bar.  I loved spending a night on our own!!  Thank you jilly

Doug took the day off on Friday the 15th for the National Holiday.  So we enjoyed our stauff's coffee, went to Sipra's yoga class together and then to lunch at Whole foods with the kids!  Yumm

my birthday oatmeal cream pie and jonah's huge cupcake (hannah fell asleep on our way home so she missed our singing)

Then it was off to the New Hope Women's retreat with Rachel.  I had been looking forward to this for 2 months now.  We stopped at the Jefferson outlets for a little shopping before we checked into our hotel and guess who was waiting inside the pottery barn outlet?  Hiding behind a happy birthday sign was Heather, Ruby and Jillian!!  Such a fun suprise!  Thank you girls for that treat - that was awesome!

After a few hours of shopping, Rachel and I headed to the retreat.  Surrounded by some of the most amazing women I've ever met, we listened to several incredible testimonies given by women in the church, sang together, listened and learned a great deal from the guest speaker, Laryn Weaver and cried...alot!  Phew.... it was truely awesome and I feel so blessed to have found our church and be a part of such a wonderful, loving group of women.

We headed home saturday evening in time to get some rest b/c in the morning Rachel and I were running a 10K together.  It was cold and windy to start as we ran along the water of the Hoover dam but then the sun came out and it was a beautiful morning!  We met a girl along the way that joined us and said she could just feel the positive energy we had.  We told her it was probably from the retreat we had just gotten home from.  We finished strong and I learned the next day that I finished 5th in my age group....1 second from 4th place and 14 seconds from 3rd.  It was a small race....but, I am still proud of us!  and it may have sparked something competitive in me ;-) 

my favorite running mate!

the pear tree bloomed over the weekend - i LOVE this tree!!

Phew...now, that really was all about me!

Thank you family and friends for the calls, cards and celebrations that all added up to a wonderful 34th birthday!

The First Day of April 2011

I dedicate this post, the content of this post and the entire day to my father, John Stark McCall Jr.  Had it not been for his early morning call this week to encourage me to fool my family, I most likely would not have participated in any shenanigans for the day.

I began the set up a day or two ago by telling my small children that we would have cake and ice cream for dinner one night.  We would forgo the good-for-you foods and eat cake as our main course.  So, as I iced the cake this afternoon, jonah and hannah got out the christmas sprinkles to decorate it and told me more than a dozen times how "delicious" it looked and they couldn't wait to eat it for dinner!  Since it wasn't any one's birthday we decided to sing a song about how grateful we were that Hannah and Jonah no longer sick (again for the umpteenth time this winter).  I handed Doug the knife to cut the first piece....his mouth watered just thinking of how good the frosting was going to taste......he cut one side....then the other.....began to pull out a piece for jonah and his face lit up with a smile.  He placed the slice of cake on jonah's plate and jonah began eating it with his bare hands (are you shocked he didn't use his fork and knife?) while he sang a tune about chocolate cake....yumm, yumm, chocolate cake for dinner....and then, BAM!   He said with a look of surprise, "what's in here??"  "mom, what is this?"  Hannah hid her face in her hands when we gave her a piece.

It was a meatloaf cake frosted in mashed potatoes! 

APRIL FOOLS!!

I think I got the biggest laugh.  Did they really think I was going to give them cake for dinner??  These poor children have a long road in front of them with me as their mama....  We did decide to go to Jenni's for ice cream after dinner - thanks Robin!

and thank you Dad for the idea from the repository!