Easter Scenes {2016}

The Halversons all cleaned up. I love how kendall is in flats and standing with a bent knee while i'm in my highest wedges so we can all pretend she's not actually way taller than me ;)

Summer, we need some of your sunshine on our white legs!

Beautiful Kenna, my brother and his fiance's italian mastiff. 

The Wilson side cousins - minus a napping Lincoln.

Favorite pic of the day! Nanna & Papa Duke (who are just the cutest)... and the neighbor's dog!

Halverson side cousins (and friend)

Cooper received a late birthday gift from his cousin Nick who is an amazing gift giver.

holy comic nerd heaven! 

We had such a lovely Easter celebrating with both Russ's family and mine. Our Easter church service was amazing and moving and I cried a little. Then Russ cried a little when his March Madness bracket went down in flames ;) Then the kids cried a little when it was raining too hard to do an Easter hunt outside but we made do indoors, and I didn't have to tromp around in wet grass hiding eggs, so really it all worked out! hehe. 

InstaMonday {Life Lately}

It's Spriiiiiing Breeeaaak!

(I don't know why I get so excited about my kids being out of school for a week. I still have to go to my part time job, and Russ still works, so we're not on vacation or anything. I think it's just the break from making sure everyone's homework is done/is in bed on time/to school on time/picked up from school/etc.etc. And everyone can sleep in!

So I guess I do know why I get excited :)

And here's what we've been up to lately, according to the cell phone...

I tried this delectable selection of mini cupcakes from Fat Cupcake in Oregon City, did not share them with anyone, and decided, yes... they are the best cupcakes I've ever had. 

WILL RETURN SOON. 

Blake turned eight...

and requested a mini-trampoline for his gift. You know, so he can do dunks on the hoop outside.

We laugh in the face of imminent childhood injury. 

My husband's cute grandpa also had a birthday... his 90th! We loved celebrating with him last weekend, and look! Santa's photobombing! hahaha. 

My parents returned from New Zealand with gifts that only someone from New Zealand would understand. Like the Raro drink mixes we grew up with, tomato chutney that is waaaay better than ketchup, and salad tongs with the all important sliding closure thingy. Yes, we are weird about our salad tong preference. 

Birthday celebrations continued Saturday night with a double date with my sister and her husband for their birthdays... and we still have one more to go with Cooper's 13th this week!

After dinner we saw Allegiant and I found out the final book is being split into two movies, so really this was only part 1, and I felt TRICKED AND BETRAYED. On the other hand though, at least I didn't have to watch the horrible book ending yet and now I can still cling to my secret hope that they will totally rewrite it. 

A girl can dream, right? 

Monday Night Confessional

- While I love the switch to daylight savings time in theory, I hate losing an hour of sleep. Yesterday we never even made it to church. So last night I made sure my kids' clocks were turned forward and their alarms set for school this morning, and then didn't wake up until Cooper burst into my room in a panic because school was starting RIGHT NOW and the boys had just woken up. The kids arrived at school 25 minutes late and I was a walking zombie.

So yeah, we're winning at daylight savings.

- Last weekend, after going 20+ years without ever backing into something with my car, I backed into a hotel parking lot lamp post and crunched my back bumper. I was like, "really?! That kind of sucks, but at least it wasn't someone's car." And then the very next morning I backed into someone's car.

WHAT THE FREAK.

I cried pretty hard, 100% due to intense mortification, and then spent the next hour absolutely mortified over how hard I'd cried.

Bottom line: the weekend will go down in history as the moment when Cooper, my poor car mate that morning, learned the hard lesson of how to (and how not to) properly console an overly emotional woman.

- Sometimes I want my husband to try on jeans that I think will look good on him and he refuses simply because they're not "loose fit". So I force him to try them on anyway because, well, I'm bossy about jeans, and then he comes out like this:

And we both die laughing. (Especially when he proceeds to shake his thing in front of everyone in the store so we can all observe that he was right and I was wrong. Dang it.)

Awkward & Awesome

Awkward: 

- When you're videoing your almost-8-year-old son open his birthday card from his great grandparents in New Zealand so you can send them the clip, and he surreptitiously picks his nose and EATS it on film. Niiiice. 

- When you return from your family trip to Baker City for the basketball state finals with your son's arm still in a splint after he was told he fractured his elbow, only to find out it wasn't really fractured, and he wore the splint for a week for nothing and missed all the fun hotel swimming with his cousins and friends needlessly, and he is NOT pleased. (But yay for no casts!)

- When your birthday boy (back to Blake again) takes it upon himself to make homemade birthday invitations for all his friends at school and takes them and hands them out WITHOUT YOUR KNOWLEDGE OR AUTHORIZATION, when you actually haven't even planned a party yet, and then you have to tell those kids' parents that call you asking about the mystery party invite that's missing pretty much every piece of pertinent info they would need, that oh, I'm so sorry, please tell your child NEVERMIND. Ugggh.

Awesome:

- Spring blossoms down your driveway!

- Having a husband full of energy again after his basketball season is over! Yeah for long overdue yard work and home projects!

-   Cadbury cream eggs EVERYWHERE! Mmmmmm, cream eggs... ;)

STATE CHAMPS!!!

They did it! Our girls won it all in the 1A basketball state championship in Baker City this weekend and it was absolutely incredible. Best Baker trip ever!

These girls are phenomenal ballers, and I am so, so proud of them all. I've watched them play since they were little girls and love every single one of them. I think my eyes were welled up from happy tears for them all for a solid hour after the final buzzer rang! 

And I can't even express how proud of my husband I am. Or how happy I am for him. He's been coaching basketball for 18 years, longer than we've even been married, and after taking over the girls team that hadn't won a single game in years, building up the girls program from basically nothing, he's brought his team to the final eight in Baker 5 of the past 8 years. Amazing accomplishment. 

Basketball is a big part of our family's identity and I look forward to many more years supporting our school - and watching our own kids play all the way through too! 

Celebration time! Let's just say we had ourselves a good evening on Saturday night and finally climbed into our hotel bed in the wee hours. Did I mention it was the best Baker trip ever? :)

Do We Get a Prize?

Yesterday started out so well. A shopping date for our school's upcoming benefit auction meant my friend Kristie and I got to play in Ikea all day while spending other people's money. Throw in a little Panda Express and you have what I like to call a WIN-WIN situation.

After picking up my kids from school and the dog from the groomers later in the day, things got a little dicey as I tried to run several last minute errands in preparation for our road trip to Baker City today... and then pack, do the last batch of laundry, and fix dinner, while simultaneously making my children do some of their school work they'll be missing for the rest of the week. (Always a confirmation that I was not cut out to homeschool. Voices were raised and gauntlets were thrown.)  

At 6:30 pm I had to attend an auction meeting, and it wasn't until after this that I was able to take Cooper up to urgent care to "double check" that the arm he'd been mildly complaining about off and on for the past week didn't actually have something really wrong with it.

The answer was yes. In fact, it did.  

A fractured elbow to be exact.

and this would be our THIRD broken arm between my two boys in the past 3 years and we may need an award, or at least some classes for my boys on how to play appropriately and safely. The cast tech took one step into our room last night and said, "oh hey! I know you guys!"

Here's a very sleepy Cooper at midnight, finally getting to leave urgent care four hours after we arrived. God bless late shift medical personnel everywhere. I made sure to sincerely thank every one we were seen by and we were awarded with the most amazing brownies snuck in from the breakroom by a kind CNA. 

You guys, chocolate sometimes does make everything better! At least, it sure helped this mama come down from the stressed out heights she'd managed to fly up to ;)

broken arm #1

broken arm #2