Easter Weekend

Our weekend was more focused on what happened to the Saviour all that time ago. We obviously didn't have chocolate eggs anyway even though coming up to easter Rebekah apparently though the special day was called Easter Egg Day. As it was our first easter with no sugar or chocolate at all in our diet, I explained that one to her. She soon figured out we could have fun without the chocolate though. It was a bit like Hannah before Christmas not thinking there would be stockings because we weren't eating those things anymore, which is funny because there never was much of that in their stockings anyway, but I guess what was there stood out as the highlight to her! Anyway, we figured that we'd prefer to have all of our easter fun on the Monday, and leave Easter Sunday to be a focus on the Saviour, which was fine with the children too. The girls did all wear matching purple dresses that we found greatly reduced last week. They were excited to all match. I didn't think to take a picture, but they all chose white tights, long white top. and black shoes to go with their dresses. Only their hair, height I suppose, and length of dresses (it only went up to age 7-8 for Rachel and Hannah instead of 8-9 or 9-10, so their dresses were shorter in comparison - still way worth it for them though!) could give them away. Several people at church get them mixed up anyway, so that probably didn't help! I know some people think it's fun to have siblings matching, others avoid it totally, but our girls are always wanting to (even with the oldest nearly 9 and the youngest not quite 4) so this was their chance.

On Monday, we had our Family Home Evening in the afternoon as we tend to do, and that consisted of the following:

Song and prayer
Lesson: reading what happened in the Saviour's life up until his ascension into heaven
Learning part of a new song
Refreshments: pancakes, and a fruit flower
Activities: 1 - Decorating the bags the girls received from Will, Trisha, Naomi and Lydia for Christmas (finally)!

Here's a picture of their bags once decorated - they finally shared the flowers all out in arrangements that everyone was happy with. Peter has one of Rachel's bags that he has become especially attached to(!) and Daddy has the easter bunny who is about to start their egg hunt:



2 - Using their newly-decorated bags to collect with, an Easter treasure hunt (clues on paper eggs, and some plastic ones to find along the way filled with grapes, a plum and some money, and a surprise gift at the end. They each had their own trail to follow around the house (a different colour to find for each person), so people were running here there and everwhere for a while, especially once they got the hang of only picking up their own colour!
3 - Each planting their own herb to care for (a part of their gift at the end)
More singing and a prayer.

We lasted most of the afternoon and had a lot of fun. It's really what we'd have done out of a family home "evening" anyway, but gathering it all together was more fun in a way.


I thought you might enjoy these clips too. When they decorated their paper eggs on Saturday, Hannah helped Peter do a few. Those two always have a lot of fun together. Hannah is fantasic with Peter - she loves to get him doing things, has great fun playing with him, and always knows just how to get him involved. At tea on Saturday because they had spent so much time together (and she'd dished up his food to cool on his plate while we got everyone to the table) Peter wouldn't accept his plate of food when I gave it to him. He frowned and pushed it away, and then took it happily and started eating when Hannah then handed it to him! Cheeky boy. He was obviously enjoying his Hannah time immensely. :o) Anyway, this happened while Rachel and I were in the dining room sticking the last bits of paper onto eggs. The paper cuttings started off in a little pile! ... Oh, and you get to see the lovely gaps where Hannah's teeth are growing too!

HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE!

We wanted to wish you all happy easter. I started cutting up some paper on Friday afternoon and the girls started decorating easter egg shapes to decorate the house with and to put on cards. Of course only those we'll actually see this weekend will get a card because getting organised to post things around bank holidays just really isn't possible! Sorry! We hope you'll enjoy some of our favourites here though, and treat them as an easter card that you very nearly did get. :o) Have a most lovely Easter Sunday, and we will hopefully be doing the same.

Bye for now

We shall be sleeping in Nauvoo tomorrow night and on Friday night will go into the Temple. I have some Mills family work to do and mum has some work for her side of the family.

Granma has taken her knitting (Here she is in Ireland, knitting Rebekah's poncho)

Gramps will not be thinking of work (here is a picture of Gramps' first teaching school, Woodhouse in Tamworth, the 6th Form, taken when mummy was 1 year old. The girl in the middle row, 5th from the right, is Sally who still sends Christmas cards to Gramps and who embroidered a pillow case with nursery rhyme characters on it for mummy when she was born.






















How happy we would have been on the day we were married on 28 December 2001 if we had known what wonderful children, son and daughter in law and grand children we would have......EVEN HAPPIER THAN WE WERE.

























So, Peter, what do you think of all this then?

We get back Easter Sunday

We love you all and pray you will be happy and safe while we are away.

love Gramps and Granma XXXXXXXXXXX

Mother's Day fun

It was really fun seeing Granma and Gramps for a bit on Mother's Day (last Sunday).
Dad entertained us well while we ate our tea. We had to quietly get out the camera before we could catch any of Dad/Gramps demonstrating to the girls one of the pieces of music Torvil and Dean had danced to. I didn't catch most of it, but you get the idea. Gramps is fun! :o)



We also made time for a little go of the Noah game we had mentioned (our sign-language version of it). Granma said she wanted to try it, but didn't know if she could keep from laughing. Choosing all of our animals took a little while as we had to like the sign of the animal we had chosen. Granma was right about the laughing!



Happy Mother's Day Mum!
Oh, and PLEEEEASE come again soon both of you!!

A walk in the woods

This was actually our family home evening (on Thursday morning, a week or so ago :o)). It was really fun. We sat in the woods near our home and read a story together and had a little lesson. It was really fun singing in the woods too - so beautiful and peaceful there when your right in the middle of it, despite the road not being too far away, especially now spring is on its way. Then we went for more of a walk collecting sticks to make various items with. Sarah made a great broom, and Rebekah wanted to stick to making a teepee. Michael put a roof on top, and we found a stick that had two built-in coat pegs, so Sarah wanted to try that one out - Rebekah did too but was very cold! Rachel and Hannah wanted to try a table between them, which is still in production, and Peter just loved eating dirt, climbing, and sliding down a dirt bank - it does make a perfect slide (he did it by accident when we were there the previous afternoon, and went straight back to do it again, and he obviously knew the spot when we got there again as he sat right down just as he would do at the top of a slide and slid right down :o) ). We'd have taken longer to finish off our creations - we were having a lovely time - but the girls were due to be picked up to go to a friend's house so we had to go. Such a lovely thing to do though.

and here are the pictures

Brown anyone?

I've changed the colours on the main panels so that you can read them easily. This seems plain enough to not distract, but some nice decoration too. I've left the main panel narrow for now, so that you can see the flower design well - I realised that even though we can see the designs with the panel wider, we also have a wider screen, so you might not have been able to, as with the horses.

Anyway, I quite like it, but am open to some criticism. If it doesn't work I might just take it back to plain colours. What do you think?

Ceri