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.