Spring Blooms

I am loving the Pacific Northwest.  I have never seen a spring bloom quite like this.  Scott seems only mildly impressed by the overflowing beauty.  He is used to it.  Anna is right on board with me though.  So many flowers and blossoms everywhere - maybe its all the blooming trees and rhododendrons.  So here are some of our spring adventures.  

First of all, my sister had her baby.  Here is Anna holding baby Enoch.  This is her 4th child and 4th boy.  The three big brothers are really excited about their new baby.  He is really cute.

He stayed asleep while we passed him around for all the cousins to hold.

My parents were in town helping with the baby and one morning we went on a little hike with the cousins, grandma and grandpa and my brother in law.  We went to see the Camas Lillies which are in bloom right now.

We hiked a bit and played in the creek

Fun cousin time!

I hike near our house maybe 2-3 times a week.  I have been checking on the Camas lilies quite often.  They are a small blue/purple flower - these pictures don't really show them that well.  They seem to like rocky soil.

Camas lilies

One day I had gone in search of the chocolate lilies growing nearby, but only found one that was looking quite sad.  Maybe I missed them.

Another day we drove down to see the tulips in bloom in Woodburn, Oregon

We just happened to run into Scott's parents (who live near), his sister and some of her family (who were visiting from Idaho, unbeknownst to us).  It was a happy and very surprising coincidence!

Here are a bunch of pics of our tulip adventures.

It was fun to see them and have some surprise family time.

Anna got heart attacked by some girls from church.  It was very sweet.

Emma and her school friends decided they wanted to wear dresses to school one day.  She wore leggings underneath, but it might mean spring is coming.

Scott has been working on the yard a lot.  It looks good!!

We took out a juniper/arbor vitae type tree and put a little apple tree in its place.

John got some glasses for close up - reading etc.  He uses them at school in class, but leaves them behind for recess.  He looks cute!

One day the older kids and I walked around downtown.  We ran some errands, went to the library, post office, got bagels and smoothies etc.  I made the kids pose by this mural and they were semi-mortified and afraid some friends would see them taking a touristy picture when we're "locals."

Easter

Easter was fun and mostly at home this year.  My birthday was actually on Easter this year but we celebrated it early to deconflict.  Here are the kids getting ready to egg hunt.

Ready for our Easter feast.

We had a nice Easter day and Easter dinner.  We all ate a whole bunch of bunny buns and other Easter goodies.

We made some baby chick treats earlier.  I got a little kit to make these from the store.

Emma was excited about this Easter basket gift she got

It reverses from chick to bunny

A day or two later we had our annual Easter egg derby.  We put a big beach towel down.  The dyed eggs perspire a bit in the fridge and sometimes the dye can come off on the carpet so the towel is for protection.   Didn't see any dye come off this year. 

We did pretty good in the sportsmanship department.  Emma cried at the end since none of her eggs made it past the 2nd round.  

We tried to cheer her up by reminding her that she won our family March Madness tournament - by a large margin.  She picked teams based on their low seed numbers (always a good strategy) and which mascot she liked the best.  She picked the correct two teams in the finals but had Gonzaga winning instead of Baylor.  She got a small Lego set as a prize for the best bracket.  Maybe I'll have her do my bracket next year.  It was cute because late in the tournament when she was soundly ahead of all of us,  I said something about how she was doing so well in the basketball tournament and she said, "Wait! This is for basketball?"

And back to eggs

Our two finalists - Matthew rolling his egg, Evil White Egg of Doom and John rolling his egg, Sunsetter.

And the winner is...MATTHEW with EVIL WHITE EGG OF DOOM!!

He wins the chocolate bunny this year, but he shared with everyone.

For spring break the kids complained that we weren't doing anything fun so the next day I invited them all to go hiking with me.  Only the two youngest wanted to go.  It was beautiful!!  But then I felt annoyed that the older ones won't even venture outside.  Scott and I decided there will be some forced family fun in our future.

John and Emma were good hikers even though I forgot most of the snacks.  This hike was about 3 miles.

Anna made Emma a crown in Elsa colors.  She sewed it by hand.

And we made some fake sushi for April Fool's Day

Anna and Emma had fun working on it together.