Easter Sunday

He is risen, risen indeed!

The Easter Bunny, egg hunts, dressing up, candy... that's all fun, but it's important to remember the reason we celebrate Easter. It's humbling to celebrate the crucifixion and resurrection. He did it all. Life is not about getting ahead or being better than someone else. It's about humbling oneself to look outside of your interests and needs, seeing what you can do for others. The ultimate example would be our Lord Jesus! 

I wish we had pictures. For Easter dinner, our friends Hiedi, Andy, and their 1 month old Henry, joined us.  Their family lives in Iowa, so we decided to have them join us. Evie wanted to be just like Henry. She asked Judd to burp her. Then she tried to drink out of Henry's bottle, then her baby bottle. We found an old bottle of hers, and she ran to the fridge to fill it up. We quickly learned this obsession was getting out of hand, so we hid the bottle! Whew!

ready for church

sleepy head

opening her Easter basket

bubbles!

mini slinky

baby's pacifier

feeding baby

sidewalk chalk

HAPPY EASTER!

Egg Hunt

Saturday our church had their annual Egg Hunt. It always opens with a short kid's program with the "chocolate filled" Easter Bunny. Al! He sang songs and told the story of Jesus's resurrection. We had a great time.

Grapevine Botanical Gardens

My parents came to visit for Easter. Good Friday was their first full day in town. Since Judd had to work that morning, we took a short trip to Grapevine Botanical Gardens, a small public park.



Evie at 20 Months

Every once in a while I try to document Evie's developmental stages. I have found that the blog is the easiest way to do that. This is more for my desire to remember Evie's stages.

• She speaks about 60 + words
• Learns at least one new word a day
• Sorts primary colors with prompting
• Can pick out a requested color when given two choices
• Says, "please" and "amen" (precious)
• Puts on some of her own shoes (not the right feet)
• Feeds herself with a spoon and fork
• Sings along to songs (in gibberish)
• Tries to make hand motions to songs
• Loves to dance
• Asks, "who's/ what's that" constantly
• Exclaims, "wow" many times a day
• Loves looking at books
• Points at specific items in books when asked to find them
• Points at individual letters within a word when it is very large print like on a tshirt
• Kisses mommy and daddy's boo boos
• Mimics people's/ TV character's actions (blowing her nose, flushing the toilet, talking on the phone, drinking coffee, funny faces)
• Pretend play: Talks on the play phone, puts baby to bed, feeds baby, puts baby in stroller, plays with doll house, pretends to drink out of doll house coffee pot
• Talks to herself during pretend play, "night night, baby" "hello" "meow"
• Asks to play with her neighbor, Chase, by standing at the front door saying  his name
• Loves school! Gives her teachers hugs and kisses
• Blows kisses goodbye
• Picks up the tiniest pieces of dust or paper ans says, "ew, trash" and insists on going to the trash can immediately
• She LOVES shoes- any shoes... hers, mommy's, daddy's, dollie's
• Loves swings...since birth!

I suppose I could go on, but I'll stop there. Wow, I just can't believe how fast Evie is becoming her own person! I love her so much!!!

Big Girl Bed.... NOT!

On April 9, her 20 month birthday, Evie greeted us that morning waiting at her bedroom door jiggling the doorknob. Yes, she climbed out of her crib and was anxiously trying to escape her room! I wasn't sure how to handle that. Later that day, she unsuccessfully tried to climb out of her crib during naptime. With all this happening, Judd and I wondered if she was ready for a toddler bed. To hold things over, we bought a gate to place at the top of the stairs. We also removed the bumper from her crib. She hasn't been able to climb out since.

A week or two later....
For some reason, Evie had been fighting bed time for about a month. One evening she feel asleep on the floor with Judd laying right next to her crib. Judd and I decided that maybe she was protesting because she didn't like her crib. The following day, Judd removed the front rail of her crib and set up the toddler bed. That night she went to bed within 30 minutes. But about 2 hours later around 10:30, she woke up crying and bolted to her door, blankie in hand. To make a long story short, we couldn't get her to go back to sleep. At midnight we ended up setting up the pack n play in her room. She cried it out until 1:30. Needless to say, she was not ready for a bed. Mommy and daddy were not ready to put in the time and sleepness nights to transition to a toddler be. The next day, the crib rails were back up! It turned out, she was fighting bedtime because she just didn't want to go to bed. She wanted to PLAY! Duh!

So excited to see her big girl bed!

Funny Face!

Tucked in tight.

Saturday

trying on mom's platforms

nutella with dad

playing with chase

(our turn to babysit)

A Quilt

Several weeks ago, I spent the weekend at my church's women's retreat. Jamie Zumwalt was the speaker. The best way to describe her is "Christian hippie" minus drugs. free love, and eastern philosophy. She and her husband are former missionaries who lived in Taiwan. Her husband actually grew up there. They now live in Oklahoma City training people with Heart of God ministries to become missionaries  in foreign countries. They both yearned for the adventure of living abroad, but knew that their calling was to train people to "go out". In addition to their training program, they opened a coffee house called Joe's Addiction in the worst neighborhood of OK City. With a convenient store and a men's club as their neighbors, they have found a way to minister to the people who work and live in that area. Joe's Addiction acts as a church on Sundays. Jamie shared so many stories of repentance and forgiveness. AMAZING.

                                       



During our break time, one of the lady's organized some craft projects to ship to an orphanage in Zambia that is linked with Wiphan, a Christian organization that aids widows and orphans. We had a large assembly line of women putting together pieces of brightly colored quilt squares. At the end of the day, much work had been accomplished, but the quilts weren't finished. I volunteered to take one home to finish knowing that I could probably sew together the strips. It's not perfect, but it's the heart that counts.