Easter pics

Got Chocolate???

So, thought I'd catch up a bit and post our Easter pictures.

We don't usually do a whole lot on/for Easter. I was quite a bit more spiritually focused on it this year, and I credit General Conference for that. Some spectacular talks, Elder Holland's in particular really moved me.

Normally, and this year was no exception, the kids wake up to find their baskets on the table,

they get to rifle through them for a while,
then Jon will go hide some eggs in the grass for their Easter egg hunt.


This was the boys' first Easter egg hunt. They did pretty well. I think only a few eggs got cracked.

And that's pretty much it. We don't do a big Easter dinner. We did go to church, I stayed in the nursery this week and didn't get to hear the lessons in Sunday School or Relief Society. I was really hoping for a beautiful musical number during sacrament, but that didn't happen, so I was a little bummed. But that's ok. There were two good talks on the Atonement.

I need to incorporate some good Easter traditions into our yearly celebrations. When I was growing up, my dad would always hide our Easter baskets and we'd have to find them. That was always fun, I don't know why I don't do that. Maybe we'll have to start that next year. Mother Goose has some really terrific Easter traditions. I'm going to have to try a few of them next year. I really love the resurrection cookies she posts about. I'm definitely going to try that one.

Somewhere I saw a great idea for doing sort of an Easter advent using those plastic Easter eggs, and putting a scripture reference inside each one to read each day as you approach Easter. Fantastic!!! I'm going to do that next year too. Sorry to whoever it was that posted about that idea, I'd give you credit if I could remember where I saw it.

Now I just need to go take down my Easter decorations. Maybe I should take down my Christmas village while I'm at it....

Can you stand it?

Ok, you'll have to pause my player if you want to hear my horrible singing in the background.
Try to ignore how bad I am, just watch my guys.
Jason especially knows all the actions, guess he got a little camera shy here.
They LOVE this song.


yeah, sorry I'm such a lousy camera person.



I'm seriously going to try to get caught up with my blogging this week. The girls are back in school, so theoretically, I'll have a smidge more time for myself. Snort! Snort!! LOL LOL

My Redeemer Lives

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"He is not here, for He is risen..."

Matthew 28:6

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I Know that My Redeemer Lives

By: Samuel Medley

I know that my Redeemer lives!

What comfort this sweet sentence gives!

He lives, he lives, who once was dead;

He lives, my ever living head!

He lives to grant me rich supply;

He lives to guide me with his eye;

He lives to comfort me when faint;

He lives to hear my soul’s complaint.

He lives to silence all my fears;

He lives to wipe away my tears;

He lives to calm my troubled heart;

He lives all blessings to impart.

He lives to bless me with his love;

He lives to plead for me above;

He lives my hungry soul to feed;

He lives to help in time of need.

He lives, my kind, wise, heavenly friend;

He lives and loves me to the end;

He lives, and while he lives, I’ll sing;

He lives, my Prophet, Priest, and King!

He lives and grants me daily breath;

He lives, and I shall conquer death;

He lives my mansion to prepare;

He lives to bring me safely there.

He lives, all glory to his name!

He lives, my savior, still the same;

What joy this blest assurance gives:

I know that my Redeemer lives!

I hope you have a beautiful and joyous Easter!

Always Remember

On this day, Christ's last day in this mortal realm He is tried and condemned by the Jews. He is taken before Pilate and then Herod and returned to Pilot again. Pilot condemns him and delivers him to be crucified--in the place of a murderer. He goes to Calvary and is crucified.

Again, I cannot begin to fathom the breadth and depth of His suffering for us. For me.

Already he has endured his sacrifice in the Garden of Gethsemane, sweat drops of blood because the agony of bearing our sins was so great. Already, he has been mistreated and abused, his body broken.

He could have stopped this at any moment. He didn't have to do it, and yet he did have to do it.

So he goes on. Up to Calvary, carrying his cross. Nailed upon it. And then, perhaps the most unbearable part. When His Father had to withdraw his spirit. Can you imagine? All His life, he has felt His Father there with Him. I would imagine He was the source of untold support. To be competely and utterly alone in the face of all that He was doing--when He was a perfect being, when nothing He ever did warranted such injustice--this must have been devastating.

This wonderful, horrible thing He did for us, guarantees us all forgiveness of our sins, if only we will believe, if only we will accept his sacrifice. If only we will covenant with Him, to always remember Him. The only thanks we can truly offer our Savior, is to accept his great gift. We can certainly never repay him. The cost is too high.

He is then buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathaea. There His body will reside until Sunday morning when He will take it up again, thus granting us all everlasting life.

I love my Savior.

I am SO grateful for his great atoning sacrifice.

I am SO grateful for his magnificent, matchless love.

I pray I can thank Him sufficiently.

Tonight

Tonight, in the last week of Christ's mortal ministry, He came here.......

(sorry if this picture came out ginormous!)

On this fateful night, he washed his disciple's feet, ate the Passover meal and instituted the sacrament. He revealed that Judas would betray Him and Peter would deny Him. He entered the Garden where he began the horrendous ordeal of taking upon Himself all our sins and woes. I cannot even begin to fathom such an ordeal.

He was betrayed, and arrested. About midnight, he would be taken to Jerusalem where he would be tried, mocked and beaten.

Just venting

So, I watched this special on the Discovery Channel tonight-"The Real Jesus" it was called. I was kind of excited going in, just thinking that it would be interesting to watch. What was I thinking? I should have realized it was THE DISCOVERY CHANNEL!!!! Now, I like the Discovery Channel, don't get me wrong. But, of course, you're coming from the perspective of science when dealing with anything on there right? It was interesting from an archaelogical point of view, but when they start dissecting why Jesus might have taught the things he taught, and where his views might have come from, well let's just say it left a lot to be desired for me.
Of course they can't prove he's the Son of God, and they weren't really trying to do that. I don't think they were trying to disprove it either. I think they were just trying to establish the political climate of the time. What just really chapped my hide I guess is that they just didn't get it! They seemed to think that He just kind of dreamed up his entire gospel based on his human background, no clue did they have that the Gospel came from His father. Our father. That it was established long before Christ even began His mortal ministry. They hint that he just sort of picked up where John the Baptist left off, and took things from there. At one point some stupid comment was made that his "agenda" included free health care, free food and something else--I can't even remember the exact phrase anymore. It was just ridiculous to me.

Anyway,,,, I'm just SO grateful to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints!!!!!

Beautiful Sunday

Was Conference wonderful or what???? I loved this mornings session. President Uchtdorf's message started my tears rolling, and Elder Hollands message just topped it off. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

What a wonderful way to head into Easter week. I'm striving to keep Christ at the center of our celebration this year. I think it would be cool to find and read scripture references each day this week that would help put us there, 2000 years ago as Christ entered the last week of his mortal ministry.

What are your Easter traditions?

A tutorial

So, I tried to do a little strikethrough tutorial just now, but it just doesn't work.
Trying to show you how to do a strikethrough actually makes the strikethrough, and the html code disappears so you can't see the code you need to use. Did that make ANY sense?
So, if you'd like to learn how to do it, shoot me an email { firelein6(@)cox(dot)net } and I'll email you the instructions.

Hope you're all having a wonderful weeken.

I'm thoroughly enjoying General Conference, it's the first time in a year I haven't had to work one or the other, or both days. Well, I did have to go to work on Saturday, but I caught the morning session and half of the afternoon session. ☺

this is a test

WhooHooo!!! Thanks Tammy!!!
uh oh!! how do I turn it off?
ok, there we go. Thanks Tammy!!

A tutorial of sorts

SO, a few of you mentioned in the comments from on my last post that you don't know yet how to get your pictures off of your cell phones. Well, this is how I do it. In your contacts on your cell phone, add your email address as one of your contacts. Then, whenever you have a picture you want to transfer to your computer, simply send it to your email address. Voila'!
(hope it's that simple on your phones).


So, I have a couple questions for anyone who might have an answer for me.

1. How do you do that little strike through thingy on Blogger?
2. How do you protect your blog from people who might try to copy it? I know there's some way to actually stop people from copying your stuff. Not that I've written anything anybody wants to copy as of yet, but maybe someday I'll actually write something intelligent and want to protect it.

I think those are the only questions I have right now. But, if you know any other cool little tips or tricks, please feel free to mention them.

cleaning out my cell phone pics

These are all pics from my cell phone. Thought I'd clean it out a bit today, and saw a few I liked and thought I'd post about them. Yeah, I couldn't think of anything to blog about.

This is yesterday at the mall. We had errands to run, and I thought I'd get us all out of the house for a bit. The mall is pretty cheap. It doesn't cost anything to go window shopping.

Lunch did cost me about $16 though.

My cell phone died as I was taking pictures. Dang it!!! These two are all I got. This is a fun little toddler play area they have in the middle of the mall. Yeah, Haley (above) isn't really a tot, but what can I say? She did knock over a poor little kid, and WOULD NOT apologize. She was too embarrassed. What's up with that? I ended up apologizing for her.

Jason (below) took a few minutes to warm up to things, I think there were too many other people around. But he finally came around. Here he's getting ready to jump off the flowers.

This is the tree in our front yard on February 27th, I meant to get another picture of it with it's little leaf buds coming in. that didn't happen. Here it is this morning!! It's amazing how quickly things grow!

this one was in February too. A couple days before Valentines day. I think the skywriter was practicing? I never saw any real message written up there.

This was last month too, my sisters place in Tennessee. That's my niece Jenae. She's about five months older than Haley. (which makes her 7)

My sister Jennivene (Jenn for short, or JV), and my niece Jenae again. I can't believe how big she's getting. She looks like her daddy.

My niece Jenae again, with her big sister (my other niece) Raven. Raven's in Germany right now with her dad. He's in the military. It was a really hard decision for my sister to let her go spend a year with her dad. So far, I think she's regretting it. Raven doesn't want to come back home. I think she's enjoying the undivided attention she gets from her dad. It's tough when you have more than one kid to give them all the attention they need. It's really hard on my sister right now. I really feel for her. Hopefully things will turn out well. Keeping her in my prayers.

This is Jon's dad, Jon--along with his stepmom, I think it's Fran. I've never met them. They live in Pennsylvania. We found this picture on the web a couple weeks ago. Jon's adopted, (half sister I guess) is getting married and has a website dedicated to the wedding preparations. Jon came across it and found a current picture of his dad.

In other news, I went to turn on the kitchen faucet this morning and got sprayed with water. What the????

Ashley.

She's gearing up for April Fools day tomorrow. She put a rubber band around the sprayer thingy on the sink.
She also wants to glue coins to the sidewalk in front of our house tomorrow morning and watch people try to pick them up.

I think I'll let her.

In the meantime, I need to think of a good way to get back at her.

Any ideas?

Track break--week 1

Thought I'd just recap what we did this week.

Let's see, you saw Monday.

Tuesday was pathetic!!! Well, not completely pathetic. Ashley got a cook book from the library and wanted to try a couple recipes. So, Tuesday she made crepes for breakfast. They were pretty good.

this was the practice one I think. She really did a pretty good job.

yummy! I put cream cheese, strawberries, chocolate syrup and whipped cream in mine, topped it with more chocolate syrup and powdered sugar.

By the time breakfast was done though, it was pretty much already eleven o'clock. We made a quick trip to the park after I dropped off two of my three giveaway packages at the local postal store. Sorry to my first place winner. The package is still sitting in my car. I'm having the worst time getting it mailed out to you Kamry. I didn't have a box for it so I meant to purchase one there at the store, pack it up and mail it off with the others. Of course, I left the address at home. Nice.

So, I tried to mail it two nights ago on my way home from work, So of course, I was doing it after hours at the post office, but the machine was out of labels I guess. Last night I succeeded in getting the label printed, but the dang drop bin wouldn't open!!! Can you believe this. I hope the chocolate hasn't melted by the time it finally reaches its destination.

Hmmm, what did we do Wednesday? I think we just stayed home. I don't remember doing anything.

Thursday we went to the mall, again just for a little bit, then we met Jon for lunch at his work.

Today, we went to the childrens museum. It was fun for the kids--I was ready to go after an hour of trying to keep tabs on the boys. There's a lot of fun stuff for the kids though.

this was a booth that simulates hurricane force winds. Got up to 80mph in there. Looks like fun!


They currently have a Clifford exhibit there. Fun stuff for the boys to check out.

making friends.....

So, that's all the pictures I'm going to try to get blogger to upload for now. Hope you all have a great weekend.

Funky giveaway

Funky Bag Freak is having her first blog giveaway. She's giving away this adorable purse THAT SHE MADE. So, go check it out and enter. All you have to do is leave a comment with some little fact about yourself, and you can enter as many times as you like.
Don't enter too many times though, because I really want to win!

Track Break--Day 1

(Terriyaki meatballs and rice)

So, when I was little and we had something I didn't like for dinner; what I would do was to take a bite of the yucky substance, then take a big ol' gulp of water to wash it down with. No chewing involved. My other trick was to take a mouthful, then excuse myself to use the facilities, where I would spit the offending matter out into the toilet.

My boys have come up with several other interesting, or should I say creative ways to rid themselves of the dreaded items.

Justin seemed to think the bowl made a fantastic little hat.

...and the food inside?? Well, it seems to blend in fairly well with his locks, no?

I must say, I think Jason's idea was a bit more creative....

Try to hide the food in your ears.

'gotta say I never thought of that one before.
(and yeah, it was definitely bathtime after dinner tonight)



In other news. Today was the first day of track break for my girls. We went to the library and checked out some books. Ran by WallyWorld for a few things. Haley's feeling a bit under the weather. Sore throat, low grade fever and sniffles. Not a great way to start off a vacation from school. Ashley and I worked in their bedroom a bit. Made a pretty good dent in the mess. There's still plenty to do in there though.



Jon brought Twilight home tonight, so we all watched it together. Well, Jon fell asleep on the couch halfway through. Ashley really liked it. She wants to read the book now. She's ten. What do you think? I know there's a bit of controversy over these books being read by teenaged girls. Let me tell you what I really like about the book though. (I've only read the first one so far, by the way). But, what I do like is the underlying theme dealing with agency. Edward could so easily give in to his dark side and choose to be your typical bad guy vampire. Instead he chooses the harder way. The road less travelled if you will. There's a lesson there. I don't want to get up on a soap box here or anything. But, we all have our agency. Sure, we're given trials and temptations and urges that we say are natural to us, so why fight them? If it's a natural instinct, it must be ok, right?

Nope.

Not necessarily.

Let me tell ya', some days, my natural instinct, urge, tendency, whatever ya' wanna call it, is to throttle (to put it as nicely as I can) some of the people in my life (not naming any names either).

But, I choose not to.

Usually.

Last Sunday. Pretty cute I think. Of course I'm a wee bit partial.

But still.