Mother Son Dance

I got to go with Eli to his school's Mother Son dance. I am so thankful that this happy, silly, fun boy is mine!

Typical Nap

This is how he sleeps: pillow over him (usually over his head), socks off, lovey tucked under his arm, and sippy, books, and animals near. 

Bear Scout

Logan has loved every minute of being an Wolf Scout and now he's ready to move onto the Bears. 

So Sweet

We were having a discussion about how in life there are things we are responsible for doing that we don't necessarily love but have to do anyway; I gave the example of how I don't love making dinner every night, but that I do it every day without complaining anyway. Then Ali says, "Can we have macaroni and cheese for dinner tomorrow?" I thought she had been distracted from our main point with the thought of dinner options, but said that yes we could have mac and cheese the following day, and Ali says, "Oh, good, because I can make that and then you won't have to make dinner for one night!" And the next day, that's exactly what she did, and I really did enjoy the night off. Thanks sweet Ali!

Happy Easter

We had a great time celebrating Easter this year. We decorated eggs (and then ate them all within minutes of the picture being taken).

My little loves in their Easter Sunday clothes in front of our pretty tulips.

The egg hunt was a hit and Jake caught on pretty quickly!

And one for tradition's sake.

We are grateful for our Savior, His life, Atonement, and Resurrection. We love Him and we love Easter because it reminds us of Him.

St Lucia Coming Home

All good things must come to an end and our end was pretty annoying. We got to the airport to find that our flight had been delayed a couple of hours, making it unlikely that we would make our connection in Atlanta. When we got near Atlanta we could see the crazy thunderstorms that made it impossible for us to land, so we headed to Nashville to refuel. Our connecting flight had been cancelled, so why not I guess. We finally landed in Atlanta at about 2am, when we should have been pulling into our driveway in Illinois, only to find out that for some reason the kiosk couldn't print our new boarding pass so we had to see a ticket agent. So we went to the end of the longest line ever and FIVE HOURS LATER we finally got to talk to a ticket agent who printed us our boarding pass. She did also put us on standby for an earlier flight home, which by some miracle we actually got on. I was so grateful to finally be on a plane heading home and glad to be able to finally take a nap (at this point we'd been awake for about 26 hours). 

We arrived home to a baby who couldn't stop hugging us and an adorable sign from the older kids (favorite parts of the sign include; "Video chat didn't help we still missed you!" and "St Lucia good? Home better!") and then after a great two hour nap the older kids came home and it was so good to be together again!

And of course a huge thank you goes out to the one person who made all of this possible: Grandma! The kids had so much fun going to movies, restaurants, watching conference and going to school, and we never worried about them a bit.

We're already planning our next trip!

St Lucia Botanical Gardens and Sulfur Springs

We spent a day wandering around the Botanical Gardens (which was very pretty, but looked very similar to our very our plantation) and the Sulfur Springs.

The waterfall at the Botanical Gardens is probably more impressive in the rainy season...

The Sulfur Springs was smelly and it was interesting to learn that the whole area we'd been vacationing in was part of the crater from a long ago eruption.