easter weekend

the kids have a 4 day weekend and we have celebrated easter to the fullest! here is a recap of our past week through photos

soccer season is in full swing!

jack and ellie are on the same team this season, which is awesome! they are being coached by jack's longtime (and favorite) coach, bryant. they are on the yellow team and charlie is on the yellow team for his age group. good thing we love yellow!

owen runs and digs and runs and digs and sometimes yells "go jack! go eh-yee!" then goes right back to running and digging.

saturday's game was HOT! and we made the mistake of not wearing sunscreen. oops!

 getting a "normal" picture of these guys is never easy. 

this was the best shot we could get after church.

each kid got a new pair of swim goggles in their basket and owen will not take his off. it was a fight getting them off before going in to the chapel!

we played several games on sunday during owen's nap time. we had an egg hunt with a couple fun prizes inside, one being lunch brought to school by mom (charlie found that one) and another being an ice cream date with dad (ellie found it). when owen woke up we had a little hunt just for him. another fun game that we play each year is what we call "Last Egg Standing" where we each pick a hard boiled egg and take turns hitting two together. if your egg cracks, you are out. the last egg left without a crack is the winner. Chris won this year! and our most favorite game of the season (probably our most favorite game of all time!) is cascarones!!! jack was the winner!

charlie had the very last egg and decided to smash it on mommy's backside

the party lasted all day because when we took off our clothes that evening we had confetti flying all over the place haha!

ellie spent much of saturday in the kitchen with me. we made a carrot cake for sunday, along with a sweet baked ham and tater tot casserole (also for sunday's dinner), spaghetti sauce, breadsticks, and salad for saturday night's dinner. we actually had a lot of fun! and holy cow, that cake is tasty!!!

silly string battle!

we decided it was time to say goodbye to owens sweet baby curls. so sad. he pulls out his hair on top of his head (ellie did too... so weird! but both their doctors said it was nothing to worry about, so we don't worry about it!) and it left his hair quite patchy and uneven.

he did super and held still for most of the cut!

after our easter feast we took a walk and watched the sunset... which was unfortunately covered by clouds, but still fun.

 i hope my boys always dye eggs without their shirts on.

 we made and delivered 5 dozen cookies to 7 families on wednesday to invite them to join us for our special easter sunday church meetings. these are both sugar cookies, one of them being a chocolate sugar cookie with dark chocolate frosting (that we usually sprinkle with flaky sea salt) and the other is a regular sugar cookie with a cream cheese frosting. sooooo good and sooooo easy!

and i had a moment where i saw ellie as a teenager and decided to take a picture and hope she stays 9 forever. partly because she's so cute and partly because I'm terrified of what she could potentially be like as a 15 year old.

race day!

chris and jack both participated in races last saturday. 

chris ran his first half marathon!!!

he started training for a marathon a couple months ago and decided running a half at the Hogeye Marathon in Springdale would be a good experience. he has been working so hard with his training and diet and we are super proud of all he has accomplished in such a short amount of time!

the kids and i set up camp around mile 5 to cheer him on.

they were very shy at first and didn't like to shout or clap as the runners went by, but i think i made up for their lack of noise with my loud cheering and clapping!
many of the runners said "i love the signs, thank you!". one lady said "i love glitter!" because the signs were very sparkly in the sun. and two different men said "I'm not your daddy" to ellie which made her very embarrassed.

it was pretty fun when daddy came into view!

ellie even managed to get a high-5!

once chris passed us, we spent an hour in the car trying to navigate our way to the finish line. it was no simple thing with all of the roads blocked off and not being familiar with the area. but we made it!

and we even had time to grab a few balloons to help chris spot us in the crowds if needed.

we were soooo excited watching chris' little dot on our phone tracker as it inched closer and closer to the finish line. and then, he made it!!!

his final time was 1 hour 44 min and 17 seconds!

he was # 36 out of 554 racers and number 7 for his age group. pretty amazing for just starting! chris was hoping for somewhere closer to 1:40, but there was a stretch of hills between miles 8-10 that were pretty brutal.

a local massage school was offering free massages and stretching afterwards... yes please!

the kids about died watching chris getting a rub down. especially when they massaged his glutes :)

tyson chicken was the main sponsor of the race, seeing as they are headquartered here, so naturally there was a giant chicken at the finish line and owen had to give it a hug, punch it in the belly a time or two and then squeeze its bum. who can blame him?

the kids loved all the free stuff that was being handed out: food, sunglasses, hog snouts, chapstick, chocolate milks, everything you can think of. for whatever reason they went particularly nuts for the muffins.

saturday night we were watching the news and they did a little snippet on the marathon. guess who made a 2 second appearance?! :) the kids thought that was super cool.

chris felt really good after the race. he did have some minor toe bleeding, but nothing painful. two of his toenails were already black, but he added two more on race day.

his muscles were a little tight on sunday night, but really he felt pretty good.

we had to rush through lunch and a quick stop at Andy's frozen custard ( of course) to get back in time for jack to race his car in the district pinewood derby! we actually thought his car was disqualified because chris had moved the wheels a little farther back (which was allowed for our first race, but not for district which we didn't know beforehand) and we didn't have time to make the necessary modifications. but the computers at the district race were having problems and that gave us an extra hour or so to get back from springdale, make the modifications, drive to the race, and cross our fingers that the Holey Rolla would burn some rubber!

he won each of his four heats and placed 3rd overall!!!

chris had to snag a picture of this tattoo because its quite impressive, even for fort smith standards. they really, really love tattoos around here and i think the motto must be "the more the merrier".