Easter Weekend

I'm posting so late about Easter because I wanted to mail some cards with Easter photos to our families and I know it is something small and maybe even a bit silly, but every once in a while I like pictures to arrive in their mailboxes that they have not yet seen on the blog.
We welcomed the start of Spring Break on Good Friday and after service we asked the girls' friend, Halle to come over and dye Easter eggs with us. The girls made a beautiful rainbow of eggs. I love them all!








I get strangely sentimental about cracking colored Easter eggs to make egg salad. I had a hard time deciding which eggs to use first.


Saturday morning we went to a pancake breakfast and egg hunt at our local Pick N Save store.

Rebekah raked in the prizes during the egg hunt.

I think she may have had a little extra help from this teenage carrot who thought Rebekah was a cutie. There were three teen helpers at the store dressed as carrots, and Emma was very concerned about their outfits. They posed for photos with the Easter Bunny {who she hardly took any notice of the freakishly huge rabbit at all} but apparently dressing as a human size carrot was crossing the line of acceptable Easter attire for Emma.

The older girls scouring the isle for eggs.

After breakfast, we met my parents at the Field Museum (The girls had marked this day on the calendar weeks earlier, they were so excited!):







The girls tried to line their faces up with the models inside the window to see what they would have looked like as an Ancient Egyptian.

Alyssa's hat was a little in the way, but she was the only one tall enough to line it up correctly.


More designer eggs back at G & G's.

And we got an early jump start celebrating Emma's birthday.

The girls on Easter morning before church.



And after church, three totally different children...the literal and figurative gloves were off as they raced for eggs in G & G's yard.

The triumphant finder of the last egg.

The girls took turns sledding in the basement. This was almost the most adventuresome sledding they got to do this year.

This picture exemplifies Emma's laid back nature...Rebekah is taking a nose dive off the saucer and Emma is reclined on the sofa in the background, relaxing and smiling. If this was occurring the other way around and Emma was pulling the sled while Alyssa was within view of her baby sister about to fall there would be a wild, state of alarm, cartoonish image of Alyssa suspended in mid air as she pounced to make the rescue. Rebekah was fine, she caught herself.

This sweet lamb cake was possibly evidence of poor planning on our part. When Culver's was closed after church on Easter Sunday {who knew, right!?} we were unable to get Emma the ice cream cake we had planned for singing her birthday song. So this poor little lamb cake that my mom had previously gotten for dessert had to stand in as a double.

I have to admit that lighting candles on the symbolic Easter lamb cake didn't seem like the best way to end the Easter weekend. Although I'm not sure that eating it and possibly having arguments about who got to eat the head, and who got the whip cream bottom is any better, so of course, none of those things happened :-)

Butterfly Fly Away and Some Spring Planting

Last Friday Rebekah took to caring for a dead butterfly. I tried to gently explain that it was already dead, but she wouldn't hear it. At one point, Emma took a quick glance at her sister's new friend and told her in no uncertain terms that the butterfly was dead, but then she took a closer look...
As Emma investigated the butterfly's health, she surprisingly declared it alive too, when only seconds earlier she had been aware of the truth. I think as the girls leaned in close to get a better look the delicate wings fluttered when they breathed on it. When we picked Alyssa up from school that day, she locked confused eyes with me as her sisters doted on a dead butterfly, but even she was later convinced she had seen it move.

Poor, sweet girl had a dead butterfly all along but that didn't stop her from trying to nurse it back to health for a good part of the weekend. She kept it in a box on the windowsill by her bed and checked on it frequently.
While Alyssa was busy with homework {I think it was a project about India on this day, but she has had so much stuff lately it all runs together} and Dave was cutting the grass, the little girls planted some pansies in the flower boxes of their little playhouse. I loved Rebekah's watering technique, and she was so happy to do this because they have been learning a lot about flowers and planting in school lately.
The Fizzy Lemonberry Pansies.
Emma watered our newly planted blueberries. She also helped me plant some Dinnerplate Dahlias. I'm so excited about them, they look like they are going to be beautiful! I'll post a picture if they bloom nicely.
Alyssa finished her work in time to throw down some Alyssum seeds for what we hope will turn out to be some pretty yellow ground cover over by our raspberries.
With net in hand, Rebekah looks for live butterflies.
These lilacs are some of my favorite things that grow in the yard. They always bloom rather suddenly and have such a strong, but sweet fragrance. They remind me of my aunt and cousins and going with them to the Lilac Day Parade and Lilacia Park in Lombard when I was growing up.

Spring Break 2012 ~ In the Books

We always try to make Spring Break a good mix of fun and relaxing. This break, the girls had lots of time with their friends, and with a whole week off at gymnastics, we had a lot more time than usual to relax at home.

I plan to do a Easter weekend post soon, but for now, some memories from the second half of our week of relaxation:

Resurrection Buns for breakfast.

A rainbow of pretty colored Easter eggs.



Grow-A-Pets that we watered and five days later they:

Grew Hair!! Poor Winnie, no matter how much we move her beak around, she still has such a sad, pathetic expression {I've decided her sadness is much more in her eyes, that's why shifting her beak hasn't helped}. She's the one sprouting the least amount of hair too. Rebekah has been encouraging her to cheer up and keep a positive attitude. Thank you Aunty Ku'ulei, Uncle Addison and cousins ~ the girls have loved seeing the pets grow!!

We started Emma's Chia Pet Scooby Doo the same day, and his fur is beginning to grow in also.

The Sachs Beauty Shop is now open.


Cupcake Central on Emma Eve.


Emma and her 9 candles on an egg shaped cupcake.

Lots of lakeshore fun on Emma's birthday as her friend, Alyssa spent the day with us:

Before I get ahead of myself...it's common knowledge (at least to Alyssa) that every good hike through the woods, out to the lake starts with freshly manicured nails.













This is the part where she began complaining that she needed a new pair of pants, which I, of course, did not have. And that her feet had sand on them. She had forgotten how much she doesn't like the feeling of wet, sandy feet. I told her to remember how much fun it had been wading in the lake, and that would keep her warm until her feet dried enough to dust off the sands and put her boots back on. I'm not sure that the mental imagery worked, but her whining was short-lived.





After walking up this hill once, I figured that maybe if I made this my new version of "running the stairs at Kinnick" I wouldn't have to jump and wiggle to get into my jeans anymore.



At first I was nervous as I watched Rebekah cross a log at least three feet above sharp, jagged rocks. But then I reminded myself who was holding her hand and knew everything would be okay. Alyssa would throw herself down on the rocks before she let anything happen to Rebekah, that is just the kind of sister she is.

We spent plenty of time at the park.

Remember when I said we had a relaxing break?
We relaxed up until the point where I wanted to get a picture of the girls after church. Come on girls, just one picture...please.

This one is pretty good, I'll take it! And another week of Spring Break please!!