Easter!

This year seems to be flying by! It's hard to believe April is here already, but it is. With April comes Easter. This year Seth is overseas, but Mark was back from Iraq, and visiting, which was special. I only had five kids in my Sunday School class, which made it all the more fun as we made graham cracker crosses stuck together with marshmallow fluff and jelly beans (talk about MESSY!). We discussed the empty tomb and new life we can have in Jesus as we colored hard boiled eggs. The kids loved it.
After church, I went out to my parents' house where we put together a picnic Easter dinner, piled into the back of my dad's truck, and headed up the hill to the cabin he built in the woods. Mom outdid herself on lunch. She makes the best potato salad EVER! When dinner was over, cake had been enjoyed, and my dad had read to us from one of his favorite books, my parents and JJoy decided to go on a walk to "the 2x4". I was going to stay back and rest, but when Mark and Zachary started talking about sneaking around in front of them and trying to scare them, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to go along. Zachary went one direction, and Mark and I went the other. At the beginning, we saw them a couple times, but in trying to go far enough around them so as not to be seen, we soon lost them. Mark, macho military man that he is, kept stopping, listening, and telling me he heard them up ahead. To make a long story short, the two of us ended up traveling a mile or so into the neighbor's property without seeing any sign of them. When he finally admitted he had no idea where they were, or where we were, it was only because he realized that the deer, chipmunks and squirrels we were standing there watching wouldn't still be there if those three had come that direction (JJoy wasn't even attempting to be quiet). So we started retracing our steps, but ended up on a path that wasn't at all familiar to us. Turns out it was a different one than is on our property. We just kept walking in the general direction of the cabin and eventually ran into the posted signs marking my grandparents' land. Sure enough, all the others had been there awhile by the time we got back. So much for scaring them. It was fun, and an adventure. Our ride back down to the house was spent by us "kids" singing random bits and pieces of Christmas songs off key as we bounced around in the back of the truck. Good times.
Mark left Monday morning, and is now back in WA state.