Celebrations Part 2

Well, I thought I’d better get another post up before I head out of town for my race tomorrow…so here goes!

On Saturday afternoon, we headed over to the Fiedlers’ house to visit with some old friends.  The Wagner family, whom we knew from church and who were in our small group, moved from the Peoria area a little bit after we moved to France, and they were in town visiting on Easter weekend.  In a funny twist, the Wagners had their own little surprise about six weeks after Jeremy was born, so we got to see baby Gabi for the first time last Saturday.

It was lots of fun to catch up.

After a couple hours, we headed back to the house, where Jeff speed-mowed the yard before we headed to our church’s Saturday night Easter service.  As I would be back in children’s ministry and Jeff would be helping out with the parking on Sunday morning at East Campus, we decided to worship on Saturday night at the Knoxville campus instead.  Since church is the same right now for the kids whether they go on Saturday or Sunday, they stayed home with Jeff’s parents, while Jeff and I had a date night!

For those of you who attended Christian colleges, do you remember the ubiquitous “church date”?  Jeff and I haven’t had one of those in quite a few years, but we had one the night before Easter!  We attended church and then went out to a late supper at a place called Noir in nearby Peoria Heights.  It is a tapas restaurant, so we ordered several “small bites” dishes, enjoyed a good glass of wine, and then headed back home. 

On Sunday morning, the kids opened some Easter treats from their grandparents.

Then, joined by Jeff’s parents, we headed off to church, which went very smoothly for our first ever Easter service at East Campus.  Over 250 people were there, which was great!

After church, we grilled out and then did Easter baskets and watched the kids hunt Easter eggs with our neighbor.  We thought that Charlotte might be too old this year for hunting eggs, but we were quite wrong.  As long as there is candy to be had, she’s there!

Poor Jeremy missed out on the Easter festivities this year.  As I may have mentioned before, Sundays tend to be rough days for him.  He was asleep when the kids found their baskets and hunted eggs, and the weather wasn’t nice enough later to take him outside.  Oh, well.  Maybe next year!

Before I end this post, I thought I would share the funniest gift from the weekend.  Jeff’s dad likes to go to sales, and someone in our neighborhood was having one.  So, he and Jeff’s mom found this chair that seemed the perfect fit for Jeremy.

What’s so funny about this, you might ask?  Let me tell you.

It’s a Shrek chair.  And when Jeff’s parents showed it to Jeff out in the garage, Jeff noticed a suspicious handle-like thing hanging down in the back.  Sure enough…this Jeremy-sized chair has a built-in whoopee cushion.  And guess who thinks it’s the funniest thing EVER?  That would be Elijah, who takes every possible opportunity to sit down in it.  It makes Jeremy giggle a bit when he makes the chair make noise, but Elijah laughs uproariously every. single. time. he sits down in it.

Jeff’s parents said that there were actually two of these for sale.  If they’d known how much Elijah would like it, they would have gotten the other one for him.

Sigh. 

You gotta love boys!

Have a good one!