Various April Happenings

Twice a year, our church holds a General Conference in which we are able to listen to the prophet, apostles, and other church leaders speak to us. It's a really lovely time to listen and learn from their inspired words. It's also not the easiest event for little ones, as it totals up to 8 hours of a broadcast stretched between 4 sessions in two days (not including the additional women's and priesthood sessions).  So we, including many others, try a variety of tactics to make it extra fun for kids and help them hopefully want to listen, or at least be present and still enough to allow us adults to listen.

This last conference in April, I tested out an ice cream sundae idea, where the kids earned extra toppings for different general conference activities they worked on.  The activities I gave them during the conference didn't necessarily excite them... but dishing out ice cream, Cold-Stone style, certainly did. Really, you can't go wrong with ice cream in our family.

 Poor picture I know, but that's what my phone captured while I was in a rush to capture these two before the got up. I thought it was cute that they decided to picnic outside one afternoon when the weather was quite nice.

Easter

Koen wanted to plan and host an Easter Egg Hunt and got started right away with making signs to invite the village. He told me his idea once he shared his signs with me.
Honestly, his excitement was high and I didn't want to shoot it down, but his idea also was an uncomfortable one for me and a little stressful. However, when I took a closer look at his sign, I noticed he included a note, asking that others try to bring their own eggs. This made my heart melt to see that he had already thought of a way to make things easier and more do-able for me.

Koen even planned a little welcome speech to share at the beginning of the hunt. He made himself a podium out of some left over cardboard boxes. He stood up in front of everyone at his podium when the time came, but his nerves quickly got the best of him and he decided it wasn't so needed.

Koen made his plans on Sunday. For whatever reason, we couldn't do it Wednesday as he hoped, so we moved it to Tuesday, giving us one day to plan, prepare, and invite. We went to the store to buy some extra eggs and sweets. Koen paid for them since this was his egg hunt. The kids loved filling the eggs.

For inviting people the day before, I was so amazed and grateful for the amount of people that came. The hunt was a huge success and we really had a greater turnout than I guessed we could have pulled off. Koen was so pleased and it meant a lot to me to see our friends come to help him accomplish his dream.
Friends brought more eggs and candy. They helped me hide the eggs in our garden and in the village to the playground. The weather was beautiful. All of the kids, ranging from 2 to 11, had other friends their age and there were plenty of eggs for all of them, without older ones having to hold back.
I really am so thankful to our friends that came to play and help. Everyone seemed to have a good time. I'd say it made Koen's day, but it really made all of our's day.

Easter Day.  We obviously don't need two almost identical photos, but Hadley's face is so great in the first one, while Koen's is hidden.




Koen's magic show is a fun show to watch. Hadley is happy to help out.

Our church asked for any donations we could make to help refugees. It offered a lovely opportunity to have a simple conversation with the kids about some troubles around the world, and helping others in need, while being willing to sacrifice some things in order to do so.
We later learned that so many donations were offered that there were enough to spread to several locations. Yay!

They've died out now, but I loved seeing a whole lot of bluebell flowers in the woods.

I'm not sure how, but Hadley seemed to have fallen asleep with her flashlight shining in her face. She seemed to think she needed some socks on her hands too.