Easter

After waking up and seeing what the Easter Bunny brought us, we started our beautiful Easter Sunday by going to church for their Easter service. After church we met up with Mike (after he slept a little bit after working the night before) and headed to my parents house for Easter lunch and an egg hunt with Cousin Adella. After a yummy lunch the kids headed out for their Egg Hunt. My brother, Paul, his wife Allison and their daughter, Adella celebrated with us. Afterwards, we headed over to Nanny and Paps to celebrate Easter with them and see what the Easter Bunny left for the kids at Nanny's house. Finally, when we arrived home, Grandma Washington stopped by to bring the kids some Easter goodies. It was a lovely Easter day!! Jesus is good!!

Easter Eve

I trust everyone had a super Easter!! We did! Crazy busy, but so nice! The only downfall was Mike had to work over the weekend. His floater day was on Easter Sunday so after sleeping a little bit, he was able to join us that day. On Saturday, the kids and I met up with my parents, piled in our van, and headed for my brother's house in Charlottesville. My parents went to a memorial service that morning while Paul, Allison and Adella (my brother and his family) joined the kids and me at an egg hunt at Charlottesville High School. There were a few activities to do in addition to the hunt and they all came home with balloons. All four kids had a nice time.

We then returned to Paul and Allison's house to eat our packed lunches, wait for mom and dad to return with my dad's cousins, Martha, John and Linda and then headed out to visit my Grandma Leftwich in Bedford Virginia. While visiting her, we were able to see my Aunt Kathy and Uncle Tim as well. My Grandma Leftwich has Alzhimers so visits are difficult since she really has no idea who many of us are. I think she still knows my dad and my Aunt Kathy, but from day to day you really never know if she even knows them. She has not known me for many years.

After our Bedford visit, we headed for Lynchburg Virginia where my Grandma Parker lives. After visiting at her "home" for a little while, we took her out to dinner at Golden Corral in Lynchburg ("G's Golden Corral" as the kids called it). After returning her to her room we left Lynchburg and headed for home. While visiting both Grandmothers we took our usual pictures. Can I tell you how difficult it is to get four kids, ages 5, 3, 3 and 2 to all look at the camera and smile all the while telling Grandma to look at the camera:). The best picture we had of the kids . . . all were smiling . . . all looked natural and happy . . . Grandma was talking in the photo. Oh well.

We returned to our house at 10:30 and the kids were passed out from about Madison Heights on. It was such a great, fun day; but a VERY long day!!

One of many!

This Easter we had our share of egg hunts! All together Ryan, Lydia and Emily participated in 5 egg hunts. We have decided to open a shop and sell candy to make a little extra cash:). Their candy stash is a little out of hand and of course it has taken all the will power I can muster to keep from eating ALL of it!!

Another one of our Spring Break activities at our center included an egg hunt. Each child at our center brought in 10 plastic eggs, filled with candy, stickers, toys, etc. One of my "mothers" and one of our center's older school-ager hid the eggs in our centers playground and the field beside the playground. Each age group had a little head start on the age group older. It worked out really well and in the end all of the kids ended up with an equal number of eggs. We hid roughly 325 eggs. It was such a great event! I love this job!!:)

Skating at Skatetown . . . oh no wait a minute . . . Funky's

The week of Spring Break, our center had a lot of extra kids that are normally attending public schools, but their parents needed care for them during the spring break week. Ryan was included in this total. This more than doubled the size of Ms. Rabia's class for the week. As a result, she decided to do some fun stuff for the kids on a couple of the days. Funky's Skate Zone hosted a Christian skate on Tuesday of that week. Funky's is a roller skating rink in Harrisonburg. When I was a kid, it was called Skatetown and I have a hard time calling anything other than that. With our center being a faith based center, this Christian Skate was a great idea! Each child brought a dollar for their skate rental and packed their lunch for the day. With the whole teaching kids thing I do during the day, I was not able to go on the fieldtrip, but managed to steal some pictures from Rabia of Ryan having the best time!! He continues to ask, regularly, "Can we go skating today/tomorrow?" He loved it!! I love the picture of him hiking his pants up. I can only imagine he and Caleb are saying "Man these are old skates!!!"--I think I wore the exact same ones when I skated there as a kid:)

FUN DAY!!!!

Today was such a great day! My co-worker, Treasa (Lydia and Emily's preschool teacher), and I have been doing a nutrition unit with our preschool students and decided to take the kids to a grocery store to tie everything together. One of our "mothers" is the deli manager at the Food Lion just down the street from our center. She agreed to give our kids a tour of the store. This was something so neat for the kids as well as Treasa and myself. Ms. Sarah (our "mother") gave each of the kids a nametag upon arrival and a hairnet to allow them to go into the deli. In the deli, they met Mr. Tom who gave each of them a piece of American Cheese. We then went through the dairy department and into the back room where we went inside a storage refrigerator and freezer and saw the box bailer bail some boxes. Then, it was on to the meat department and to produce. In the produce department back room we were able to go into the produce cooler and see some different fruits and vegetables. We finished off the tour by spraying off the produce on the produce department floor area with the hose--each child got to spray a little bit. We said our thank you and good-bye to everyone as each child received a Food Lion bag filled with crayons, pencil, balloon, color page and a banana. It was such a neat day for all of us! I had a particular attachement to this fieldtrip because I worked at this Food Lion when I was in High School and College. They have had a huge renovation since I worked there, but for as many things as I saw changed, that many were the same. Thank you so much Sarah and the staff at Food Lion!

Ryan starts T-ball!

We signed Ryan up for T-ball this year and he started his practices tonight. The games will start towards the end of April. The McGaheysville t-ball league has 4, 5 and 6 year olds on the teams. We decided to wait until he was in Kindergarten before we signed him up. Mike signed up for Assistant Coaching (when he is able to be there) and started that tonight as well. They both had so much fun!! Ryan practiced a little defense, hitting and running the bases. On our walk home he kept saying "Mommy, I had a really lot of fun!" Lydia and Emily enjoyed being there as well watching "the teams." There were a couple of kids that were on his team that he knew from school. It was great! We are so excited about him playing and are hoping this is the beginning of his professional sports career:). We will keep you posted on his game schedule.

Twins Club Egg Hunt

Today was our ARCMOM (Augusta/
Rockingham Counties Mothers of Multiples) annual egg hunt day. The kids first egg hunt of the season. We dug out our baskets from the closet and headed to Purcell Park. Once there we decided it was too wet from last night's rain so we headed over to ARCMOM's meeting place, the March of Dimes House. After two rounds of the kids racing around to find the plastic colored eggs filled with candy, stickers, tatoos and plastic rings; they were all satisfied with their findings. The little kids were more interested in the eggs than what was inside and got caught up in looking at the first egg they picked up and not hunting for anymore:). The ARCMOM egg hunt is always a fun event.