Happy Easter

Let’s see if I can do a quick run down of this last week. Monday was business as usual in the morning-workout, kids to school, help in classes, clean house and prep for bible study. We got a good amount of rain that day, so Jackson’s track practice was canceled along with the twins’ first soccer practice. So, that cleared out schedule a little bit. We ate an early dinner and then dropped the kids (except Jackson) off at my parents and Andrew and I went to a K-Life meeting. Jackson stayed at home and Leah gave him a ride to K-Life a little later that evening for the Cross Talk. He said they had a great turnout and he thought the leaders did a good job with their presentation. My dad got Ellie to dance class and we were able to pick her up by the time she was done.

Tuesday was bible study day, which went well, but we did have to finish up a little earlier so that I could get to the TriFAHL meeting. Then it was off to the Primary to see Lincoln’s class presentations on national symbols. This was a quick project that they mostly did at school. He was supposed to collect some items at home that he could use to construct his symbol at school and they only had one day to do it. Thankfully, Alex and Ty helped him come up with some ideas along with me and he was able to take some partially spray-painted pieces (we only had part of a can of white paint at home) of cardboard, Legos and straws to school. He then used it to construct the Lincoln Memorial. He had a short speech he gave along with it as did other kids in his class and they all did a great job.

Andrew brought some office work home over lunch, so I got busy working at that. And we had some more rain off and on, so although Jackson did still have track, Lincoln’s first soccer practice of the season was canceled. So, we just had Ellie’s dance class that evening. And the next morning, I ended making a last-minute dentist appointment for Ellie the afternoon before since she was complaining of a tooth hurting and the gum above it was red and swollen. Her appointment wasn’t until 9:15, so I dropped her off at Andrew’s office after dropping off the others at school and got a quick swim in before taking her to the dentist. It ended up that the tooth was loose and just needed to be pulled. Amee took care of it for us and all was good. I hadn’t seen any of the others get the swollen, red gum like that before. Then I mentioned that I was thinking about making an appointment and showed them where I was concerned and said my jaw had been sore. So, they just sat me down then and took a quick x-ray. Everything seemed to look okay though. So, our dentist visit seemed kind of silly. Wednesday had a beautiful forecast, so I switched my workouts around a little so I could run outside since it was the only nice day in the forecast for a while. But, it never got nice. I was a little grumpy when I started my run and it was about 10 degrees less than it was supposed to be, cloudy and misting. It was an hour run and I had to help in Ellie’s school right afterwards, so I just ran around the loop. Then I went to Ellie’s RAP class to help sort pizza orders. When we got home, Ellie saw that her Tinker Crate box had arrived, so she got busy putting together a hydraulic crane.

And the boys still played outside even though the weather was kind of yucky.

And she and the twins did end up having soccer that night. It even rained on them, but they didn’t quit. They were pretty muddy when they were done. The forecast really doesn’t look good for us getting much soccer practice that isn’t cold and rainy. This is why I have always avoided spring soccer. Maybe I’ll remember next year. Thursday brought cloudy, cool weather again, but thankfully not the rain. The kids didn’t have school Thursday and Friday, so I woke up Ellie and Jackson and let them know I was going swimming. I swam and then did some quick grocery shopping before stopping by my dad’s office. I just haven’t felt that great most of the winter and had been feeling nauseous for over a week, so my dad just wanted to do some blood tests. Thankfully, the flu tests came back negative and I just had a slightly elevated white count, so not very conclusive. The kids had checked in a couple times while I was gone, wondering when I would get home. And that afternoon we had our neighborhood egg hunt. Leah is nice enough to organize it every year. She had everyone participating drop off their eggs early and a few of us moms hid them throughout several yards. I hid the gold and silver egg and then we had all the kids gather in Leah’s yard before we set them loose. Once most of the regular eggs were found, it was time to get serious about the gold and silver. I eventually gave clues and Grace found the silver while Ellie found the gold. Then it was time to go back inside and warm up.

That evening, Jackson had small group and Lincoln had soccer. I took one of his friends home afterwards and they were both muddy messes since the field was so wet and we hadn’t seen the sun in a while to start drying it out. That night, I made some peanut butter cookie “muffins” for an Easter dessert to take out to Matthew and Kristin’s the next night. Thankfully we did see the sun on Friday and the kids got out and enjoyed it. Andrew spent a lot of time at home and he worked on building a second work bench for the ranch. Ellie and Jackson helped out some on it too.

I had my biggest workout yet on Friday. I had a 4 hour 15 minute bike ride that I did on the trainer. It was in z2 except for 5 minutes at z4 at the 4 hour mark. I distracted myself with doing my daily devotional, reading the chapters for our bible study, paying bills, ordering some summer clothes for the kids and the like. I didn’t even turn on the TV. Then I had a 45 minute run and since it was nicer outside, I decided to go outside to do it. Afterwards, I did an Epsom salt bath to help ward off sore muscles. And I think it helped as I only had one spot on my lower back that was sore that had bothered me before after long bike rides.

Before we headed out to Matthew and Kristin’s, Ellie helped me finish off our dessert.

Andrew went out before us and put out some hay and then just met us at the house. Kristin made a delicious dinner and even did a quick egg hunt for the kids before Ellie and I had to leave to go to a last minute dance class for her competition routine. I told Melody we would probably be late, and we were. But I was able to go by Walgreens and go wash the car before I had to pick Ellie up. Saturday looked to be promising weather-wise. Andrew took the kids out to the ranch and they were out there for a while. They went around with his mom to pick up mineral tubs and she promised them $1 per tub. I think they all made some decent money.

Back home, I worked on picking up the house in general, getting stuff ready for Easter, doing laundry and eventually headed out on my run. I thought it was going to be warmer as it was in the 50s, but the wind was pretty stiff, and I didn’t dress accordingly. I was really wishing I had a thicker shirt on, my gloves and something to cover my ears. I was supposed to do 1 hour 45 minutes, but I realized about 45 minutes in that I needed a bathroom break, so I headed towards home. I took a quick bathroom break, grabbed my ear cover and a warmer shirt and headed back out for my last 40 minutes feeling much warmer. As I was heading out again, Andrew and the kids were coming home, so they drove by me and talked for just a bit.

The rest of the day was kind of low key. We did our own version of egg dying using the fake eggs, markers and Ziploc bags. It kind of worked and definitely wasn’t as messy as using dye.

I was pretty late getting dinner going and we didn’t eat until about 8. They were watching God’s Not Dead, so we just threw some blankets on the floor and continued watching as we ate dinner.

I had planned to go to the store that night, but just couldn’t muster up the energy to do it. It was a late night and the kids didn’t get to bed until closer to 11. So, they weren’t too anxious to get up the next morning. I actually had to wake them up to make sure we had time to do Easter baskets and make it to church by 9. They started searching the house for the baskets. Ellie found everyone else’s before she found hers. The twins and Lincoln got Spinjitzus and were anxious to get those put together. I made Easter “bunnies” out of canned cinnamon rolls that kind of turned out 😊.

Then it was the mad rush to get ready, try to get a decent picture and head to church. It was cold and the forecast called for snow, but it wasn’t falling yet.

We had a good church service that was about proving the resurrection of Jesus and when we came out of the building, the snow was coming down. Since I didn’t get to the store the night before, Andrew and the kids ran me by Wal-mart for a quick stop. Then it was back home and time for our own egg hunt. We had never had one of our own before and since it was snowing pretty well outside by this time, we decided to do it inside. We sent the kids up to their rooms and hid the eggs on the main floor and the basement. I hid the silver egg in the little microwave of the play kitchen and the gold egg was put in two bags and then under the plunger in the basement bathroom. Ellie was quick to find the silver egg but it took a while and a few hints to find the gold egg. And in the end, Ellie found it too. And once she started opening her eggs, she ended up with a lot of the cash ones. There was some definite disappointment, especially from the twins. We need to keep working on that being a good loser thing.

The kids spent the rest of the day just hanging out and not doing too much. I enjoyed my rest day from training and started cleaning up from all the Easter stuff. The snow kept coming and in the end I think we had about 5 inches. My parents were in Kansas City for the weekend and said they would bring back Strouds for Easter dinner, but the wait was going to be too long, so they decided to just do Hy-Vee fried chicken and then it became a breakfast dinner. Either way, my kids were happy to go see them. They had a bit of a rough trip back from KC, especially from Macon to Kirksville. We got over there around 5 and Ellie and I made resurrection rolls while my parents made dinner. But the rolls weren’t as popular as we had hoped, so not sure we will make them again. But the rest of the dinner was good. Everyone was tired though, so we headed home to get ready for the upcoming week.