One Busy Weekend - 10 Year Anniversary, Eli's Half Birthday and Easter

This past weekend was very eventful.
It was also the kids' Easter Break. They had a four day weekend.
And Sean had a three day weekend.
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Friday, the 14th, was our 10th wedding anniversary.
We originally were talking about doing something big to celebrate.
But those plans changed once we found out that I'd be 9 months pregnant.
We ended up deciding to go on a lunch date.
But first, we went to the store to buy some last minute Easter things for the kids
and gifts for Eli's half birthday. We're such parents.
We ate at a Mexican restaurant in town that we've been wanting to try.
...
Then  we set up a tripod and took a picture of ourselves.
Every five years we plan to take a picture of ourselves with a picture from the last five years.
It's a fun idea. I just wish the first picture was more of a close up.
Oh well, it won't matter in 50 years. All of the pictures will look tiny.

Then we headed to the local nursery. We bought ourselves three more trees.
We must be getting old because we were so excited about our gift to ourselves.

We originally had two Flowering Pear trees in our park strip.
We didn't pick those trees, they were a part of our builders front yard package.
Last summer when a mole killed one of the pear trees, I knew that I wanted to just replace them both.
So now in our park strip we now have to Spring Snow Crabapples.
And we planted a second Kwanzan Cherry.

Sean made a yummy dinner and I made our family a birthday cake for dessert.
A lot has changed in 10 years.
When we got married, Sean was 21 and I was 20 and we were college students.
Now we're in our 30's, have our own home, Sean has had a career for nearly 7 years
and we have four, well five children.



Saturday, we did all our commercial Easter celebrations.
The kids got cards and candy from my parents in the mail.



We did Easter baskets in the morning.
Lexi was ridiculously excited this year for her basket.
I am not sure why,
but she started talking about all the things she wanted in her basket like it was Christmas!
I had to repeatedly remind her that the Easter Bunny wasn't Santa.
You don't get to pick what's in your basket and it can be different every year.
...
These three kids woke up early and were driving us crazy.
So we let them look for their baskets before Ruby even woke up.



Eli found Ty's basket.
He got lots of diapers and some jammies.

When Ruby finally woke up, she was confused but excited about her music card.

That afternoon we had an egg hunt in our backyard.
I've been looking for to doing this for years.
Last year it snowed, so we did our egg hunt inside.
And the year before that we weren't in our home yet because the closing date got pushed back.

The kids came outside in age order, youngest to oldest.
Ruby figured out what to do really quickly.

Our yard is really boring. There aren't a lot of spot to actually hide eggs.
Hopefully next year, our dirt borders around the fences will be filled in with plants and decor.

I tried to think of things to put in the eggs other than candy.
I did coins and jewels for the sandbox.



I realized after the fact that we shouldn't have waited to aerate our lawn until after Easter.
In all of my pictures it looks like our grass is covered in poop!

Eli got the dirt egg this year.
He was so excited. He kept telling us that he was the winner and that he loved dirt.

The next day was Sunday, the 16th, Eli's half birthday.
We gave him his presents in the morning.
He was so excited.

He got two new Matchbox cars. A red tanker and an orange moving van. He was so excited.

And he got a T ball set. Sean was so excited.

Me and all the kids had colds so we stayed home from church that day.
We had a great family discussion about the last week of Christ's life.
We watched several videos that the church has put out about Easter.
Both the girls cried while we watched images of Christ's crucifixion.
Avery told me, "I don't want my Savior to die."
And Lexi was just hysterical.
Sean also read several verses from the Bible.
And we asked the kids lots of questions. I was impressed with their knowledge and understanding.
...
That afternoon was beautiful and we spent it playing outside in our backyard.
Sean worked with the kids on their swings.



Lexi helped us make Easter dinner.
She did the rolls (Rhodes rolls).

And she learned how to make deviled eggs.

We set the table with all adult dishes and the kids were so excited to have a fancy dinner.

We ate ham, funeral potatoes, jello, peas, rolls and deviled eggs.

It was delicious!

And that night for dessert we had cupcakes and ice cream per Eli's request.

Hopefully the next blog post I do will be about Ty's birth.
Otherwise it will be about Avery's birthday which is in 8 days.

Reflecting on the Past - 10 Years of Marriage and Our Growing Family

This month is an exciting one for me and the Mister.
It marks 15 years of being a couple.
And 10 years of marriage.
And we will become parents to our 5th child!
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I have been feeling reflecting a lot on the past as we approach some milestones in our marriage.
Sean and I really have grown up together.
A lot has changed since we met at Youth Conference in the summer of 2001.
...
Marrying this man has lead to such a wonderful life.

...
Here are some blog post about our marriage from the last decade.
Reading through them has brought back so many memories.
And it was so fun to look at all the pictures that I shared...

Here's some pictures we had taken right before our first anniversary.

I didn't blog about our actual anniversary.

I was six months pregnant with Lexi at the time.

And here's our second anniversary.

We were in Utah. Lexi and I flew back from Washington just in time to celebrate.

Here's the blog post that included our third wedding anniversary.

Sean had just graduated the week before and we were waiting for Avery to be born.

Here's our fourth anniversary blog post. 

This post includes lots of pictures.

We lived in Albuquerque at the time.

And our fifth anniversary blog post.

This post also includes loves of pictures from our marriage.

This was a few weeks before we moved to Utah.

And it was during my second trimester of pregnancy with Eli.

I couldn't find a blog post about our sixth wedding anniversary.

At that time Eli was 6 months old, Avery was about to turn three and Lexi was four.

I did blog about our seventh anniversary.

We went to downtown Salt Lake for a date.

And I was in my first trimester of pregnancy with Ruby.

We were living in our second West Jordan apartment at the time.

Here's the blog post I did for our eighth anniversary.

This is still probably my favorite anniversary. It was the day we closed on our house.

Here's our ninth anniversary post.

I can't remember what we did to celebrate, even though it was only last year.

But this post has a ton of pictures!
This post made me cry while I reread it.
It still sums up perfectly how I feel.
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We're not exactly sure how we'll celebrate our anniversary in a few days.
That's the joy of being 9 months pregnant.

....


As we get ready to welcome the arrival of our second son, Ty,
I have been thinking about the birth of our other four children.

Here's the blog post I wrote about Lexi's birth.

And here's Avery's birth blog post.

Here's the blog post with Eli's birth story.
And here are pictures from Eli's birth.

Here's Ruby's birth story blog post.
And here's pictures from Ruby's birth.

I'm excited to share another blog post with another birth story and lots of pictures.