This year for Easter, we wanted to do something bigger. Something better.

It’s the day that Jesus rose from the dead, defeated death, and did so all for us.

Shouldn’t this be the Super Bowl Sunday of events for Christians?!

We want it to be. Since I had been working a bit extra at work, they told me to take a few days off, so I took Good Friday and the following Monday off. I consider it a test run, and if we can do something like this in the future, I think we will attempt to.

Our weekend was spent – as you can imagine… at church.

Friday, we had the Good Friday service. Saturday was the Easter egg hunt at the church, and Sunday was Easter!

I planned for these things. What I didn’t plan for was the arguing and fighting. The mess making and the lack of caring if we do anything over the entire weekend. That was a bit much. It came from the two older kiddos, but mainly in a flex of power more than anything. They both like going to church and were looking forward to this for a while, I think they sensed the same in us and said, lets cash in on this.

Above you will see a picture of my beautiful wife walking with Ezra. They matched pretty perfectly. The boys mainly matches their momma. Ezra and Luca both wore blue- Elijah wore a half blue half red shirt to match everyone. Ara was going to wear blue, but when she saw I was wearing red, she changed into a red dress instead so that I wouldn’t be alone and had someone to match.

After we were all done with church, we took a trip to Changs Mongolian Grill.

I have to say, I wasn’t a fan. I compare this food to YC’s Mongolian BBQ in Phoenix. It doesn’t compare. The kids didn’t enjoy it, and it made both Sky and me feel not so great afterwards.

If anything, we know what we won’t have for dinner in the future.

The rest of the month has been mostly quiet. Ara had a sleepover, and after staying up all night she got herself grounded after making some less than desireable choices made on lack of sleep. That pretty much rounded out the month, that and weekends and evenings spent cleaning/picking up around the house.

just Pray

Hey again

We started with a trip to Discount Tire. The low tire pressure light was on, and after inspection, they found a nail. They said it was a pretty big one—I’m assuming it had been in there the whole time (because the low tire pressure light was also on when I looked at the van and came on a few days after we had it). Either way, it’s fixed now.

We successfully watched 82 out of 82 regular-season games with the Blazers. Below is a photo capturing a moment of their last game of the season. It is very nice to have games aired for free so everyone can see them without a subscription. Disclaimer: We didn’t watch every quarter of every game. Sometimes we only caught a few minutes, but it was on and we were available, we made the effort to watch.

What else? Hmmm… I had another day with the kids as Sky spent some time hanging out with her cousin and her sisters. I took them to the park. That’s right. And yes, they seemed to enjoy it.

Believe it or not, the bottom photo is of the following day, where as a family we went to another park. This time to let the kids run wild and get some energy out. Ezra is a big fan of basketball (and can you blame him?!)

Finally, we were looking out the window on a trip to Costco. We noticed there was this park with all these pink fluffy trees. We looked it up, and it was a paid park. Boooo!

When we read a little more, it turns out they have one free day each month. The one for April is just upon us in a few short days. So instead of going randomly, we made the plan to go on the free day.

It didn’t disappoint. It’s a super nice park with everything seen above, 2 or 3 areas for kids to play on different playgrounds, a water play area, a beach, and another garden area. Well, with all of that said, we had only one thing to say:

I’ll be back.

just Pray.

Hey everyone

Is it April?! It’s crazy that this little marble seems to keep spinning faster and faster.

I was out in the backyard and Ara asked if she could mow. Why certainly. She did a pretty good job overall.

The next few days were rather warm and so we had a cookout.

Due to all of the warm weather – we had to mow our front lawn in what seems like only a few days later.

The bottom photo is an image of Luca picking flowers for his mama. He was talking to me and Ara when I was mowing the backyard and apparently got upset that I was running over all of the flowers he gives to mommy. So this time I made sure he had all the time he needed to pick them all out before we mowed.

That weekend I spent some time with Luca, Ara and Ezra while mommy was at a baby shower with Lijah. We went to a park, and a nature lookout while we waited.

Why is there a photo of Luca in boots, in a diaper, running down the hall? Well, we went to church, dropped all the kids off, and as we went to drop Luca off, we noticed he was soaked. Through his diaper and into his clothes. We took him into the bathroom and got him changed. Not all was fine, though, as we did not have a change of clothes for him. We ended up pulling the kids out and leaving. By the time we would get home and back, church would be over.

The next day, we were able to spend the latter part of the afternoon at the Woodburn Tulip Farm as part of the kids’ school. They considered this a field trip. Count me in. I didn’t think we would be able to do this at all this year, so I count it as a win.

The photos turned out pretty good, considering it was a muddy, windy, rainy day. NOT the day I’d pick to go, but you know what? It turned out alright. As always, more photos on Instagram.
Until next time

just Pray