Favorite Ideas and Links - Daily Learning Focus

After our MFME trip in Feburary and the resolutions we set together, I've been making a valiant attempt to carve out a few minutes each day to learn something new. I realized I'm so busy dishing out ideas and help that I don't take the time to focus on my own learning and growth. I've started taking about 10 minutes a day to read or watch something that offers me new thoughts and makes my brain really think. I've been watching quite a few TED talks and General Conference talks. It's amazing how much difference those 10 minutes make!

Here are a few favorite subjects I've learned about in the past couple weeks:

WHAT CHILDREN NEED
I re-watched Rosemary Wixom's great talk from Conference about how to build up our children and be kind but strong influences in their lives. Loved her points about being more fully present with our children and our lives as we commit to disconnect with technology regularly (that helped prompt the big promotion we're doing on Power of Moms of Screen-Free Week next week).

IMPERFECT FAITH IS OK
I love Elder Holland's talk on holding fast to what we know and standing strong until additional knowledge comes. Faith and knowledge never start out perfect. The size of our faith is not the issue - it's the integrity we show towards the beliefs we do have. Do not start with what you don't know. Start with what you do know and build on that. Here's the link to watch it:

MOTIVATION
I thought a lot about what really motivates me (and my kids and those I work with at Power of Moms and in other capacities) and how to increase motivation as I watched this TED talk by Dan Ariely: What Makes Us Feel Good About Our Work

Here's a little description: Why do we work and attempt to accomplish hard things? Contrary to conventional wisdom, it isn't just money. But it's not exactly joy either. It seems that most of us thrive by making constant progress and feeling a sense of purpose - plus we need to feel that our attempts are appreciated and acknowledged. Behavioral economist Dan Ariely presents two eye-opening experiments that reveal our unexpected and nuanced attitudes toward meaning in our work.

CHOICE, HAPPINESS, AND SPAGHETTI SAUCE

This talk by best-selling author, Malcom Gladwell (wrote Tipping Point and Blink) was very interesting to me. It was really interesting to think about what brings happiness is not something that can be named for everyone but that rather, happiness is brought by different things for different people. He guy talks about how revolutionary it was when it was discovered through taste tests that there was no ONE or TWO spaghetti sauces that made most people happy. Rather, people liked very different things and the spaghetti sauce companies learned to make a whole lot of different varieties. Interesting stuff. Here's the talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce.html

HOW SCHOOLS SHORTCHANGE KIDS
And I really liked thinking back to my days at Harvard Education School while watching this humorous talk by Sir Ken Robinson about how schools are shortchanging our kids in many ways and how important it is to nurture our kids' creativity: http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

Schools are set up to produce college professors based on the curriculum covered and methods used. But not everyone wants or needs to be a college professor! We need dancers and artists and inventors and organizers - none of which is promoted by the current curriculum in most schools.

Love/Hate Relationships with Cars

Growing up, my parents had a strict policy on only buying cars they could pay for in cash. So a long string of various clunkers became part of the fabric of our family life and memories.

First, there was Clark, my mom's old boat of a car (a Ford Fairlane). We named most of our earlier cars.

Then there was "Windy" the olive green fake wood-paneled station wagon in SLC.

Here's me, Shawni, Josh and Saydi on top of good old Windy -wish you could see more of her olive green and fake wood splendor!

Then we had "Redy Rosie," the red (surprised?) mission station wagon in England followed by a red station wagon with a white top back in SLC. They all seemed like decent enough cars - perhaps because I wasn't old enough to remember the issues they had.

Then came the Van - no specific name - just THE VAN. It became a huge part of all our family adventures.

That van was such a big part of our Mexico trip, our trips to national parks in Utah, our summer Bear Lake trips (we'd have to decide between choking on dust with windows down or dying of the heat with windows closed on the long dirt road to the cabin there), and our regular daily trips to and from school, lessons, church, everything. It was this full size Ford van, silver van with blue "racing stripes" on it. It had nice captain's chairs for mom, dad, me and Shawni and blue and white speckled shag carpet with a padded back area where the little kids could roll around and play rather than sitting on the uncomfortable benches that lined the sides in the back. My dad had a CB radio installed that was hooked up to the back speakers in the van so he and mom could tell us stories and make us sing all the family songs whenever we were on a road trip. One year, we got the van all "remodeled" - had it painted dark blue, added bigger windows in the back, put in a couple bench seats that could fold down into beds and dark blue carpet that was perpetually very dirty-looking (plain navy blue carpet in a car...just a few crumbs makes it look dirty). We thought it was a totally awesome van then.

Why in the heck can't I find any photos of that van? I guess we just don't think to take photos of things that are just part of the scenery of our every-day lives...

One day my dad brought home a 1976 diesel Mercedes and was super proud he'd found it for an amazing price. My mom was somewhat aghast at the sight of the car. It was about the ugliest chartreause (pea green/bright yellow) color you've ever seen. My dad said it looked like a perfectly lovely color to him (he's colorblind). And that became the car that Shawni and I drove to high school. Heavy - built like a tank. Slow - maxed out at about 5mph uphill. Safe.

But the slowness proved to be a double edged sword. About a week after I got my license, I was chugging up the hill right by my high school, headed to a school "stomp" with a bunch of my friends, when a car tried to pass me on my right while I was trying to move over to the right since I was going so slow. That speedy car came out of nowhere into my blind spot as I was moving over and BANG. Turns out I'd just run into the brand new sweet-16 convertible VW Rabbit of another girl at my school. Right next to the school parking lot. Right when everyone was arriving for the dance. I felt pretty darn embarrassed hanging out in the middle of the road with a couple policemen at that particular point in time. There was no damage to the Mercedes. But that poor little Rabbit . . . No one got a ticket since no obvious blame one way or another was decided by the police. I was shaking and crying and I remember heading over to the 7-11 right there to call my dad on the payphone and tell him about the problem. I felt so awful. I'll never forget how calm and kind my dad was about the whole thing. Way to go dad. He came down, talked to the officers, we got the car off the road, and I headed on into the dance. Turns out I was somewhat of a celebrity and everyone wanted to hear the story...

While mom mostly drove the van for like 10 years or so (then it became a teenager car), dad had a slew of different cars, most of which seemed to be perpetually at the shop. He had (and still has - but no one's seen it in years) an old silver Alfa Romeo convertible that he'd take us on dates in when we were little. We thought it was a pretty darn cool car. We named it the "nickle car" because of its color. But over the years, when it kept breaking down all the time, a nickle seemed to be about all it was worth. He found and fell in love with a 1960's Daimler Jaguar with beautiful original burled wood trim and leather seats. He had it shipped home from England. We had to pick it up at a port in California and Shawni and I got to help drive it back to Salt Lake City - which seemed like a pretty exciting thing to do until we realized that thing was SLOW and HOT (no air conditioning). My dad still has that car too. It's been someplace getting fixed for about 20 years now, I believe.

Later on, when the van finally died (after like 300,000 miles I believe) and we started having more drivers in the family, more and more clunkers came our way.

All drivers in our family came to know and love a guy named Frank at Frank's Service Station who'd come rescue us when our cars would routinely break down. I'm pretty sure the Eyre cars provided a pretty high percentage of Frank's business!

There was this terrible old bright yellow Suburban that broke down again and again and finally bit the dust when one of my brothers had the bright idea of using it to tow water skiers in the shallow part of Bear Lake. He drove that thing in a little too deep and found out that when a car's exhaust pipe is submerged, it's just not a good thing.

There was the old navy blue limo my dad bought from a mortuary (not a hearse - but some people called it that). My younger brothers got to drive that to and from high school and it became a great vehicle for road trips after the Suburban was dead.

There was the dark green Dodge Power Wagon with a winch on the front that my dad bought for our Oregon adventure. Jonah loved that thing and it was his car in high school. He'd take it on crazy 4-wheeling adventures. Then Noah inherited it - here are some of Noah's memories of the Power Wagon:

"I idolized how Jonah would drive that sucker and was determined to drive it one day. Oh the joy of revving that baby up with no muffler! It was common for me to have to push and compression start the truck - but that was one of the things i liked about it. I felt like I went through an initiation of sorts as Jo introduced me to Frank at Frank's Service Station and they both taught me great things about spark plugs and that beauty of an engine. I recall as if it were 10 minutes ago when i first tried to get the truck going on the slight incline down the street from us and killed it several times with a long building line of cars behind me. My dad was going "give it some gas!!" so i finally really punched it and we went roaring out of there. I'd park it on a downhill slope at school so i could get her started easy if the key didn't work."

"My best moment with that truck was when I was on a date with a gal and was really hoping for a kiss. The passenger door had been having some problems opening so I thought sweet, I'll pull up to her house, she'll try to get out and I'll be like well since you can't get out we'll kiss... So we pull up to her house and I wait there as she tries to open the door with a little smile inside. It doesn't open. She's like "I can't open the door" and I'm like "oh no problem I can go around and open it for you from the outside since it works that way" then we sit there quiet and she's probably like "OK dude, come on around and open the door already." After a few seconds of awkward silence she says "No worries, I can just climb out the window" and I'm like "No that's OK" then a few more awkward silence mili-seconds and I go in for the kiss. Just as the lips touch my foot inadvertently pushes on the gas and that no muffler sound rips through the quiet snowy streets and ends the kiss quickly. Then she smiles and thanks me for the kiss and climbs out the window."

Great story, huh?

As a college graduation present, my parents gave me mom mom's old Ford Taurus which seemed like a pretty nice car compared to anything else I'd ever driven. It did turn out to be a bit of a lemon, though, stranding me and a friend in Beaver Utah when the transmission conked out at a gas station. We were on our way from SLC to Vegas to visit a mutual friend from college and were determined to still get there, even when the guy at the gas station said the car needed tons of work that he couldn't do and would need to be towed elsewhere and parts would take a week or so to arrive.

We decided to hitchhike to Vegas. A nice man at the gas station said he'd pre-screen people while he was pumping their gas and find out if anyone who seemed safe was headed for Vegas. Sure enough, after about 20 minutes, the guy helped us find a very nice retired couple who were headed to Vegas and were happy to take us along. We had a great time in Vegas, got some cheap 1-way tickets to fly home, and about a month later, I found someone to tow the car back to SLC and did my first car repair research and payment on my own.

Even though I really shopped around, that new transmission was really expensive. And then the car kept having problems. So after my mission, my dad assigned Shawni and I to go sneak a brand new car into my Grandma Ruthie's garage (a gift from my dad and uncle for her birthday) and take away her old blue subaru sedan which I got to keep as my car. It turned out to be a really great car for a long time.

Then there were the old Mitubishi Monteros that my younger brothers drove in high school and that now "live" at Bear Lake, having become the perfect thing for hauling people and stuff from the water's edge up to the cabin. It's totally amazing that these things still run. I think they're almost 20 years old.

The twins loved pretending to drive the Monteros and the older cousins have loved learning to drive on the beach where there's nothing they can hit.

Don't worry - the rule is that kids can only ride inside or on the back - they were just on the top and front for the photo...

I think my brother Jonah is the only one of my siblings who's kept up the "only old cars" tradition. He buys these old Mercedes diesels and converts them into "greasels" that run on used vegetable oil that restaurants are happy to have Jonah take off their hands. They've saved tens of thousands on gas over the past 10 years or so that they've been using greasels and Jonah makes pretty good money finding and converting old cars into greasels for other people as well. He's a very good self-taught mechanic so the old cars thing works great for him.

But I have to say I'm pretty darn pleased with our Toyota mini-van we bought brand new 8 years ago and that has never once broken down or had any problem. And we still drive Jared's 1997 Mercury Mountaineer that he got brand new in college and has only just started to have the occasional problem. I have to say there's something to be said for getting a new or almost-new car and keeping it in great shape with regular maintenance....

Here's our good old Mountaineer taking its turn as a beach vehicle at Bear Lake.

But wow, what great memories and crazy adventures all those cars offered to us growing up!

P.S. For my sister Shawni's recollections and more details and stories about our family cars, click HERE.

Easy spring decor - in the snow

Right now it's snowing. It's really coming down. Seriously? What's up with this? Look at those poor little daffodils!

I'm glad that just yesterday the kids and I collected lots of beautiful branches of buds and blossoms so we can keep enjoying springtime in our house even if it's winter outside.

I saw this on Pinterest when I was looking for simple Easter decor ideas:

And the kids and I were going to collect "signs of spring" to create our own version for an Easter decoration celebrating new life. But while there weren't many buds to be found at Easter, I was determined to still do this simple and lovely spring decor idea as soon as there were buds to be found. Yesterday proved to be the perfect day for bud collecting and we created this simple but very pleasing display using all the jars and vases we could find around the house:



How I love the bright baby green of new buds bursting open and the vale of green that eases across the landscape at this time of year. And while the snow is a bit annoying, the buds and baby leaves will somehow survive. They always do. We can all learn a lesson from those baby leaves and buds and flowers that make it through the spring snows and still thrive in the end!

Three Years in England

When my parents were in their late twenties, they were asked to go preside over our church's "England London South Mission" for three years. They had 4 children (the oldest of whom was me and I was five years old), my dad had a flourishing career as a political consultant (he's run Jake Garn's campaign and the bond election to build Symphony Hall in Salt Lake and restore the Capital Theater), and neither of my parents had really left the U.S. before. But they accepted the call, rented out our house in Salt Lake, and packed us all up for an exciting new adventure in England where they'd be charge of managing and supporting about 200 missionaries.

 

Us kids quickly picked up proper British accents at the regular public Church of England schools we attended and after a while, our parents' American accents started to sound sort of foreign. Here we are in front of the mission home where we lived, headed out to school in our school uniforms (they had these matching pants to go under our dresses and keep us warm in the winter and we're holding our gym bags with our blue leotards, gym skirts and plymsols we changed into for PE)




At school, I loved learning English Country Dancing and participating in some dancing festivals.

That's my beloved teacher, Miss Christie, in the background of the picture above. When I was this clueless little American 6-year-old who couldn't read at all (they didn't teach reading in Kindergarten back then) and everyone else in her class had started school at four years old and already had reading pretty much down, she patiently helped me to catch up. Then I lucked out and got to have Miss Christie for a second year because she moved up a grade. Then the third year, I got Ms Sharman for my teacher who I thought was probably the meanest teacher ever in the history of the world (at least to my 8-year-old mind). She screamed so much that I started getting stomach aches and calling home sick because I was so scared that she might scream at me. Thinking back, I often wondered if she was really as bad as she seemed or if I was just going through some anxiety in general or something. But then we lived in England again when I was 16 and my brother Jonah happened to get the same teacher. He had a very similar experience and had such bad stomach aches that my parents took him to the doctor, fearing he had ulcers. I guess she really was that mean . . .

And I loved, loved, loved when I got the special honor of being the angel in the school Christmas Nativity and one of the teachers made me elaborate wings covered with hundreds of tissue-paper feathers.



We loved having elders and sisters from the mission in our home a lot for meetings and dinners (I remember my mom making amazing dinners for scores of people on a regular basis - I so looked forward to those dinners!).

Here are the "Office Elders" and "Traveling Sisters" at the mission home for a special brunch at Christmas (that's my mom on the far left in a smashing patchwork full-length dress and that's my head in the foreground)


My parents always had us sing or play violin or piano for the missionaries at firesides and meetings and my dad often took me with him as a speaking partner to do mission conferences when my mom needed to be home with the other kids. From the age of 6, I learned to be ready to be called up at anytime when my dad was speaking to give a little talk or sing a song. And when the missionaries were over, we often sang together.

Here's a picture of Saydi with one of the office missionaries - one of the few shots I could find that showed a little more of the mission home we lived in.

One year, my mom made us all matching PJ's for Christmas with the Union Jack on them. She had us wear these pajamas to sing at firesides and that sort of thing. We were all pretty proud to be honorary Brits.


Here's my 6th birthday party in the backyard (or back garden as we learned to say) of the mission home. This was right after we moved to England. My mom always made us fun cakes and made sure we had great birthday parties.



For birthday parties, all the girls came in nice dresses and common gifts were underwear and bath things like soap and sponges (but this pink doll Shawni is holding up was the star gift at my 7th birthday party). I was sort of expecting toys. But fun bath stuff and new underwear proved to be very helpful and fun gifts in the end.






We spent so many fun hours playing around in that backyard on the old rope hammock. Once day we found a hole in the fence and climbed through to find a seemingly magical garden behind ours. There were daffodils everywhere and a huge huge tree that seemed so perfect for a swing. We got to know the man who owned the garden and lived in a big old house there - Mr Godwin. He let us build a swing in that huge tree of his and we'd go over there and swing all the time. Mr Godwin's garden and Mr. Godwin's swing were big parts of my childhood. Wish I had a picture.

We often spent nice chunks of the weekends at nearby Box Hill where we'd run and play and wander.

When we weren't in school or involved with the mission stuff, we visited quite a few castles and learned a lot about English history.

Here's my mom and brother Jonah at Buckingham Palace with our mission car (we named it Redy Rosie)


Here's Josh and Saydi at the Tower of London.


Here's the changing of the guard at the Tower of London.


We loved running around and flying kites on the Epsom Downs right near where we lived (where the Queen and everyone who was anyone showed up in fancy hats and lovely dresses and morning suits to watch the big horse race, the Darby, every year).





Here's my mom checking out all the fanciness at the Darby.


My mom had two babies while we were in England. Jonah was born 10 weeks early and was given a 50% chance to live. The whole mission, members, investigators and missionaries alike, fasted and prayed that little Jonah would be OK. I remember so vividly praying so hard for that little guy to pull through. And he sure did. That tiny little three-pounder is now 6'5" and the father of four.

Here's Jonah with the nurses who took care of him for the 6 weeks or so that he was in the hospital.


Here's Jonah when he came home from the hospital.


About a year after Jonah was born, my parents started thinking about whether it might be time for another baby. They were hesitant and a bit worried after how hard everything had been with Jonah. I remember that one Sunday afternoon, Jonah was down for a nap and they sent me and Shawni upstairs to look after Josh and Saydi while they thought and prayed about whether it was time for another baby. After a while they came upstairs to let us know we could come down now and we proudly presented them with four slips of paper, all of which said "yes" on them. Shawni and I had decided to hold our own little kids' counsel and vote on whether we should have another baby while our parents were having their counsel. We'd had to help Josh and Saydi write down their votes. But the vote was unanimous. And my parents had felt the same way. It was time for another baby.

The pregnancy with Talmadge was probably my mom's easiest, the delivery went perfectly, and Talmadge turned out to be the calmest, sweetest baby ever. We were all so delighted with him!

Here we are meeting him in the hospital:


And here we are with him at home:


This is Saydi, me, Shawni, Talmadge, Josh and Jonah (who apparently wasn't happy about being in the picture)

England was all we could remember by the time our mission was done. As we headed home, we were a bit apprehensive about what America would be like. On the plane home, Shawni asked my parents who was the queen of America and we were quite shocked to hear there was no queen. Shawni then asked, "Then who do they put on their pound notes?"

When we settled back into our American life, I remember thinking that American accents sounded so sloppy and was so surprised at how American children treated older children, parents and teachers - there'd been so much more respect in England! And school was SO easy for me and Shawni in America after getting ahead for those three years in England. I think a lot of our good grades throughout the rest of our school careers can be attributed to those years in British schools.

That three years in England was such a formative learning experience for all of us - perhaps especially for my parents (after the mission my dad gave up political consulting and started writing books which ultimately led them to be bestselling parenting authors). And my parents wished the younger children could have a bit of the same experience. So when I was a junior in high school, we went back to England and lived in the old mission home again (the church had just purchased a new mission home and wanted to rent out the old one while waiting for the market to improve - amazingly perfect for us!). I'll write more details later but it was great for us to go to British schools again and reunite with great friends and neighbors while learning a ton more about British history, visiting lots more historic places, and also doing a lot of geneology since our ancestors are mostly from England.

Then I went on Study Abroad for 6 months in London my sophmore year of college, my siblings Josh, Jonah and Charity all served missions in England, and Eli went on study abroad there. We've been back many times to visit. England is still with all of us in so many ways!

Spring Break and Conference Weekend - 2013

Usually spring break is the time we do big family trips. We've done Mexico, San Diego, LA, a massive road trip to Washington, Oregon and Northern CA, and San Francisco. Since a lot of our summer vacation is devoted to time with extended family, we've made spring break our time for fun travel with just our own nuclear family.

But we did a big trip to the Bay Area for a wedding during Christmas break and we're planning an epic road trip to the East Coast as soon as the kids get out of school this spring. So we decided to stay put this year for spring break. And it turned out to be SUCH a nice spring break!

The weather was gorgeous pretty much all week and we loved seeing the daffodils come out in the front yard and going on walks to see all the little buds starting to pop out on the trees. We slept in and made our favorite foods. We had a little read-a-thon and spent some good time at the library. We got haircuts. We went on a huge bike ride one day and a little bike ride another day. We played all our favorite board games and went to a great neighborhood pot luck dinner.We spent a day in Salt Lake where we enjoyed a great art exhibit at the church museum featuring wonderful art by teenagers, learned a lot at the planetarium and saw a wonderful IMAX movie about butterflies with my parents, and went swimming at my parents' condo building. And I had a chance to get this new Joy of Reading Kit done for Power of Moms (just launched yesterday - check it out if you want).

Beautiful flowers and art near Temple Square

 Here are some of the kids' favorite works of art from the international youth art display at the museum - some pretty talented kids!

This one is called "An Eye Single to His Glory."

Love the artistry and symbolism of this one - the gospel and the love of God (represented by the flowering Tree of Life) brings us great light. But we have to plug it in.

Loved this image of valiant young women holding up their light for all to see.

These kids can't get enough of their Grandfather (and Grammie who, as usual, was busy making nice food for us so she wasn't in the picture...)


Towards the end of the week, we were stuck at home for a couple of days because we needed to be here while contractors finally worked on replacing our water main. I was frustrated about having to be home-bound during the kids' break when there were so many little excursions I was hoping to do - and the stress of coordinating different contractors and negotiating escalating prices was not fun. But the kids had a great time playing with neighborhood friends and being outside so much. They LOVED watching the excavator at work as they dug trenches for new pipes and were super excited when we decided to have the excavator also dig a hole for the in-ground trampoline we're saving up for in the back yard. We got the hole we needed for the trampoline but perhaps even more exciting, we ended up with a huge dirt mound that was an instant magnet for all the neighborhood kids who had the greatest time playing "king of the hill," burrowing through the hill, and sledding down the hill using an old sled. We're thinking we just might have to keep the hill (but maybe some grass on it would cut down on the serious dirt the kids are covering themselves in daily now!).
See the twins in the tree watching the excavator? They were out there all day. And the lovely "fort" the kids built of scrap wood?


This hill has become the most exciting thing in the neighborhood!


We finished off Spring Break with a wonderful Conference Weekend. SOOOOOO nice to just relax and enjoy conference together and to have Jared all to ourselves all weekend since there were no bishop meetings. We watched all four sessions (some of them at slightly different times thanks to DVR) and Jared and Ashton had a great time together at the Priesthood Session.As soon as we turned on conference, the older kids went and got paper to take conference notes and the twins settled on the floor with a bunch of puzzles to work on.  It was gratifying to see that the kids knew just what to do w/o being asked (so marvelous when good practices are in place after so much sometimes painful repetition!). Eliza took copious notes as usual and asked some great questions. Ashton took sporadic notes as texts on his phone and had to be reminded a few times to wake up and listen. Isaac wasn't much of a note-taker but had insightful comments and questions here and there. Jared and I sat there soaking in the togetherness and the great words that were spoken and we came away uplifted and armed with new resolutions.

Light, Peace, and Hope seemed to be themes woven throughout this conference - just what I needed emphasized. I especially loved the talks by Elder Scott (how everyone in the family can and should work to create a Christ-centered home), Sister Wixom (building up children; turning off technology), Elder Ballard (the priesthood and how it belongs to all of us), Elder Clayton (great thoughts on marriage) and Elder Holland (doubt leads us to find truth; we're always working on our testimonies; fan the flame of our faith while working through out doubts). We had a great discussion about chastity following Elder Bednar's talk. The kids loved President Monson's story about playing with fire and obedience. themes of conference that I heard were peace and light.

There were so many gems shared and so many things I realized I needed to work on. But this little gem by Elder Scott helped me feel peace when it comes to figuring out how to move forward without being overwhelmed:
"We need not worry if we can’t simultaneously do all of the things that the Lord has counseled us to do. He has spoken of a time and a season for all things. In response to our sincere prayers for guidance, He will direct us in what should be emphasized at each phase of our life. We can learn, grow, and become like Him one consistent step at a time."




Sometimes staying home is just so very very nice!

Wrap-up on Easter

Best Easter ever.

For the past couple of years, Easter has been part of spring break week so we've been on the road. While we still did most of our special Easter Week traditions, it was tricky making some things happen while traveling. It was SO nice to be home for the full Easter week this year and be able to focus more fully on the very special meaning of this week.

I already posted about our egg coloring early in the week. But here's a glimpse at the rest of our Holy Week.

Our "Last Supper" was great this year. The kids remembered so many wonderful little details about what happened at the Last Supper while eating lentil stew, pita bread, grapes and goat cheese by candlelight.


The neighborhood Easter Egg hunt was great:

 Everyone was very pleased with their haul - and very kind about sharing with younger kids who didn't find quite as many eggs.

Jared clearly loved his role as the Easter Bunny.

 

Saturday morning, we hid and found all the real eggs we'd dyed and then feasted on them for breakfast. We've adopted the Bulgarian tradition of "chooking" (knocking) our eggs against other people's eggs and seeing which egg can survive all the "chooking" without cracking. 

Here's what the kids found on Easter morning (after we watched the Easter story video)

(seriously, Ashton has GOT to let me cut his hair!)


After enjoying some nice candy appetizers, we had our traditional Eggs Benedict for breakfast:


Then we went to church. The kids sang beautifully with the Primary in Sacrament Meeting and I had a great time presenting a fun Easter lesson during sharing time in primary.

And of course, I had to take pictures of the kids in their new Easter clothes. But, of course, it wasn't easy to get a decent shot. I keep trying to convince the kids that picture taking just has to happen sometimes and that it can actually be quick and painless if they'd just stand there and smile for about 30 seconds. But somehow, it's still just plain hard to get a decent photo.

Despite warnings that we needed to stay in our Sunday clothes after church until after pictures, a couple kids ran upstairs to change out of their clothes before I could catch them. And they were NOT pleased when I insisted they put their Sunday clothes back on (and weren't exactly quick about it).

These two were happy to pose while we waited for everyone else to change.


Then when we finally got everyone somewhat dressed again (no shoes, I had to give in somewhere...) and got everyone positioned for the photo, a dog showed up and the poses quickly dissolved.

After the dog left, we tried again. I got everyone situated and posed and stepped back to take the photo, pleading for everyone to please cooperate since the battery light was blinking on the camera.

Just as I got ready to take the picture, Silas thought it would be hilarious to untuck his shirt and strike a crazy pose. Everyone got mad at Silas. Silas started crying.

I comforted Silas, got his shirt tucked back in, got everyone positioned yet again, and took some shots. This is the best we got - goofy-faced Ashton and red-eyed Silas. Oh well!

When the photos were finally done, my parents arrived and we enjoyed a lovely Easter dinner together.

One other thing we did this year was watch the last two episodes of the new History Channel mini-series, The Bible. Everyone was pretty much glued to it and I thought it was quite well done and mostly quite accurate according to what I understand and have studied about the New Testament. It brought up lots of great discussions with the kids and seeing things portrayed different ways really helps us think about how things really might have been.

Finally, I loved this post by my sister Saydi who wore herself out trying to make Easter special and meaningful through trying out a bunch of new traditions, some of which proved to be over-kill for her young children. I was her not so long ago. I've mellowed and figured out that often less is more. But I've also realized, like Saydi, that even when our heart-felt efforts seem to go awry, our kids are internalizing a lot of wonderful stuff and our hard work does pay off, especially when our work is accompanied by love and inspiration.