Happy Easter--Christ is Risen!

I tried to incorporate some Ukrainian/Russian traditions this Easter. I made these Eater cakes called Paska, which means Easter. On my mission everyone would make them and give them to each other on Easter. The Russian Orthodoxes would take them to their church to be blessed before eating them. We put out all of our painted eggs from Ukraine, to decorate for Easter (after all it seems the strongest association people make with Ukraine is Ukrainian Easter eggs). The one with Christ in the front is especially for Easter. The back has the Russian letters X B for Христос Восскресc--Christ is Risen. Notice the 3 little bunnies in front, Adriana put those there.

I am so grateful for the resurrection of Jesus Christ and for the gift he has given us to be reunited with our mortal body after death. I am also grateful for his suffering for our sins in the Garden of Gethsemane and on the cross at Golgotha. Without these amazing acts of sacrifice there would be no hope in the world or faith in my life. I feel so blessed to know that I will see Sarah and Grandpa again and all of our loved ones. I try to use his healing power of forgiveness in my life and to turn away from sin and embrace his Gospel everyday.
On to our more secular celebration, the Easter Egg Hunt! The Easter Bunny came while the kids were taking a nap after church. It was the best nap they have had in months!

Dallin crawled right over to a bunch of eggs and started playing with them.
Annika posing with her piggy that the Easter Bunny brought her.
Ariel opening eggs.
Adriana showing me a Care Bear shoe charm she found in an egg.

This was Saturday when Nikolay was putting the benches together, Dallin was so glad to help.

Shopping list

We just got our tax return today, so for date night tonight, instead of going to a movie we are going SHOPPING!!!! (despite all the critics boo-hooing Bush's plan to "boost the economy" we really are spending our tax return and our tax rebate, when we get it, on "consumer spending" instead of paying down debt or investing it. I don't know how much we are going to boost the economy, or if we had already bought all of these items on credit we would probably be paying down those debts with them, but we have been patiently waiting for spring when we could finally buy the stuff we want. My Grandpa would be so proud of me.)

Here is my list:

Blinds, about a year ago we got new windows, and when it came time to hang the old curtains back up I couldn't bring myself to put the ugly 50 year old curtains back up, so we have been without any window coverings at all in our bedroom and the "blue room." Our bedroom has those really high bomb shelter type windows that were popular in the 50's. So from the street you can only see the tops of our heads.

Carpet for the blue room. Maybe it won't be the blue room anymore.

Pillows for our bed. I saw something about dust mites on Opra a few months ago and was totally grossed out, besides our 8 year old down pillows just aren't what they used to be.

A new skirt for Easter. I bought a sweater a few days ago. In the store it looked lavender, but it is starting to look more and more pink to me every day. (I don't wear pink.)(When I bought myself a new dress for Christmas and was feeling guilty for spending money on myself, my mother-in-law encouraged me by saying that I should buy a new outfit for each holiday.) I think that is great advice. Here is some more advice: if your husband ever gives you something that you think is too expensive, DO NOT return it, that will just teach him not to buy you nice stuff. Maybe you can't afford it right now, but the more important principle here is teaching your husband how to pamper you, because after all who else is going to, and you are going to love him more for it in the long run and you deserve it, think of ALL those poopy diapers.

A lamp for the blue room. We have serious lighting problems in that room. Nikolay just put in a new light fixture, but it isn't really any brighter just not as annoying as the halogen spotlights that we had.

Maybe a webkinz pet for myself. They are buy one get one free at LimitedToo for select pets.

Easter candy. I am not a huge fan of my kids eating candy because it ruins their teeth, but we need a little candy for Easter and new tooth brushes to balance it out. I want to get JellyBellies, and Jordan almonds for sure, anything else is just excess sugar. Maybe those eggs that are like Whoppers too.

Lets see how many of my readers can comment on their favorite Easter candy or what the Easter Bunny is bringing their kids on Sunday.

Or comment on what you are going to do with your tax return if you are getting one or Bush's tax rebate.

Busy Weekend

We had a really busy and fun weekend. We celebrated Jacob's birthday with him. I can't believe he is really 24 (or a grown-up for that matter). Nothing against him, he certainly looks and acts like a grown-up, my brain just can't get over the image of him at my mission farewell 11 years ago so he was like 13.

On Saturday we adopted the newest member of our family, Taz, this gorgeous cat,from the Humane Society. He is 4 years old and great with kids as you can see in this next picture.
For the first couple days he hid all the time and it felt like we didn't even have a cat except at night when he would climb all over me while I was sleeping. Today he finally came out and interacted with the family. He even put up with Annika following him around and putting blankets on him. She is so cute how she talks to the kitty. Yesterday morning we were still in bed and we heard her exclaim "There goes Taz!" in her cute 2 year old voice. He came with the name although it totally doesn't fit his personality. He is so calm and purrs all the time, that's what we liked about him.
Saturday morning the big girls and I went to Disney on Ice "Princess Wishes." We got cheap tickets in the nose bleed section with coupons, but the girls didn't know the difference this being their first time in such a large arena. They thought it was cool and scary how high we were. Ariel wanted to go even higher. The show was great Disney fun. The scariest part was the big dragon from Sleeping Beauty, it even blew fire onto the ice. It wasn't until then that Ariel believed me that it was real ice that they were skating on.

Basketball and seeds

Last Sunday after church we played Hullabaloo, a game by Cranium that Maegan sent me recently. I love how everyone is wearing mismatched clothes 'cuz we were just hanging around the house. Dallin is almost walking by the way.
I have been listening to normal radio in the car lately becasue every time I turn NPR on they are talking about a certain governor who recently resigned and they keep using words that I don't want my kids asking me about quite yet. So when I was driving home from playing basketball tonight, John Tesh was giving me advice about relationships. He was reading some questions that you should ask someone you are dating before you get married, one of them was "What did you do today?" That way you can get to know the other person better and how they spend their time. I am trying to decide what the best thing that I did today was. I finally planted some seeds. That probably wasn't the best, but something that I have been meaning to do for a while now. I should find that list of questions and start a tag about it. Maybe tomorrow.
"Picture me mommy!" Annika kept saying as I was trying to get a good picture of the new frames I put up on the wall. Then as I tried to take her picture, she kept hiding. This was the best one out of like 20. I really do need to read the manual for the camera.
You can kind of see our new family picture in this one. I hope that I am not violating copyright, I am really just trying to show our cool new frames. Erin inspired me when she was describing how cool it looks to have all black frames. I can't really do black because a lot of our furniture is dark brown. So I tried to change all of the frames on our wall with photos to dark brown. I am pretty clueless when it comes to home decor, so any pointers I can get, I take willingly. Thanks Erin, I like how it turned out.
Taking a picture of them straigt on didn't really work because they are so spread out that they don't really fit in the frame very well and the color looks more black than brown, so I tried this angle. If you noticed the tulips, Nikolay got those for me for March 8th, International Women's Day. That is the one Russian holiday that I have insisted we observe. Doing double Christmas and New Years would be too much, but I'm not against getting flowers more often. Yeah, they celebrate Christmas and New Year's two weeks later than we do. Well, technically now they have Old New Year's , and New New Year's. Go figure.

The other thing that I was thinking about writing about is how awesome the game of basketball is. Don't tune me out here, all of you non-sport types (as if tons of people are reading my blog not just like 18 or something including the guy from Morocco who accidentally stumbled upon it)but there is this magic energy that happens when you really get into the game and you are really passing with your teammates and your body is actually doing what you are trying to tell it to and even faster than you thought it could surprising yourself even.
Speaking of surprises, both Ariel and Adriana want surprise parties this year. Isn't that funny?
I am considering starting another blog to write about all of my troubles and problems, because I really want to keep this one positive, but I really want to write about that other stuff too and maybe even get some input from other people. Hmmmm.....

Adriana Says:

"Mom, I know what happens if you eat too much and you are not a grown-up."
"Really, what?"
"You throw up."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
"What happens if you eat too much and you are a grown-up?"
"Then you have another baby."
"Really?"
"Yeah."

Life without Chemo is Great!!!!

For the past two days Ariel hasn't thrown any fits and is super silly and funny and positive, her energy level is way up. I feel like I got my sweet kid back after 2 1/2 years. Maybe I don't have to take her to a psychologist after all. :)

A little long while ago

Adriana was telling me about something and I asked her when it happened she said she didn't know so I asked her if it happened a long time ago or a little while ago and she said it happened a little long while ago. That had me cracking up so I said that I would put it on my blog. Then Annika said she was going to put it on her blog too. Funny thing is I didn't even know she had a blog.

Here is a joke from Ariel "Wouldn't it be funny if someone you didn't even know asked you if you wanted some hot chocolate?.....Get it, hot chalk like the chalk you draw with and lit like when something is on fire?"
Then I said, "We could make that into a joke like 'Why were the customers disappointed when the waiter brought them some chalk on fire?... Because they ordered some hot chocolate not hot chalk lit." She looked at me weird and thought for a little while then said, "Or 'Why were the customers disappointed when the waiter brought them hot chalk lit?...Because they ordered hot chocolate." That made me laugh even harder than our brilliant joke.

Spring

\Adriana and Ariel posing with their bikes
We have been having a lot of fun outside lately.

I didn't mean to post this one, but I'll leave it if their are no objections.