weekend in review

Oh man. This girl. She got to come with me to her first Bridal Shower and she was completely enraptured with the whole experience. I had told her it was a party just for girls and ladies, to celebrate our friend Elena who is going to marry Max in June. I told her there would be cake and punch and that we would get to watch Elena open presents from everyone to fill their kitchen so she could cook good food. So Elsie wore a lovely dress with her white tennis shoes and sat transfixed on the bride (who we got to sit with!) and ate so much sugar she got a tummy ache.

At lunch she had asked me how Elena and Max knew they wanted to get married. I told her that they were good friends and that at some point while being good friends they decided they wanted to be friends for the rest of their lives. That they couldn't imagine not being each other's friend. Elsie liked that answer and was glad that Daddy and I are good friends for the rest of our lives.

I am too.

It was quite the exciting weekend as Saturday began by picking the winner for the maple syrup giveaway. Congrats to Joy Peterson! Big winner from right here in our town! I wore my favorite maternity dress for the big reveal video on facebook and only once we posted it did I realize that I cannot wear that short dress any more! My belly has grown in the last few weeks, shortening the dress considerably! But I couldn't really tell that while wearing the dress because I can't see past my big belly. But I could definitely tell on the video! Hilarious. And that darling dress is now retired.

Then we went to the Home and Garden show in our town. Which translates to: walk around the ice arena getting candy and balloons and entering giveaways and seeing everyone and their grandma there. It was so fun! My kids actually thought it was some sort of carnival. And to our great joy, we met a neighbor how has sheep and knows how to sheer them! Hooray!

We came home and my sister-in-law Sara came over with her kids for the afternoon. My kids love their big cousins so, so much. And Kirby and Toby and Ruby are so great with my kids. Kirby recently gave Ivar TONS of Hex Bugs and Hex Bug Track (which we didn't even know existed...but now we do!) and so they got to play with Hex Bugs, and visit the animals and Toby even taught Ivar a magic trick that Ivar is impressively good at (Toby is a really good magician!) I got to talk to Sara for a good long time and the afternoon was awesome.

They pulled out of our driveway and minutes later our good friends showed up and dropped off their three girls for a babysitter swap, as they had watched our kids on my birthday. So with all six kids, we ventured outside for an easter egg hunt. It was awesome and so fun. And two little one-year-olds can cover a lot of farm yard, heading in different directions, quite quickly!

Those girls left at 7, I put the kids down and then made 55 Matzo Rolls for a Seder Meal that happened here in our town. And then I finished my book!

This morning I got up and could hardly put my pants on. For real. I was so tired. But we made it to church and I taught about Palm Sunday and sincerely enjoyed every minute with the 3-6 year olds I get to teach. They are a really great crew.

We came home, there was a sheep Baaing like crazy at us in the field and Ivar went to investigate. He came running back, "I think a sheep is having a baby! Her butt is SO RED!!!" Rory ran out there and sure enough, there was a little lamb, still in the sack. So we spent the next few hours delighting in the straight forward birth and the darling little lamb trying to stand on its sturdy legs.

I asked Elsie if she wanted to go see the lamb and she said, "No, because once I saw a goat being born and it was very gross to me." So instead she prepped for the bridal shower.

And when we got home from the bridal shower we ate scrambled eggs and tator tots and called it a great supper.

We cleaned the house a bit, folded laundry and got the kids down and then Rory and I went out to the barn to see our darling lamb named Sunday. It started to rain and we went to the upstairs of the barn where Ivar used his walkie talkie to tell us that it was raining very hard. We talked back and forth with him for a while, him in the window of the house with Elsie, us up in the big window of the barn, everyone waving and saying I love you back and forth.

And then Rory and I stayed up in that upstairs for an hour and talked and it was one of my favorite dates ever.

Then I came in the house and talked to my mom about my weekend and said, "I really should go blog about this, because these are some fun memories..."

We will be posting pictures of the baby lamb (and soon to be lambs, when the other sheep go into labor) like crazy people on our instagram page, if you're interested in pictures of darling barnyard babies...