Josh and I want to start doing monthly one-on-one outings with the kids, just short ones. So we put all the dates in the calendar and got organized. 

My first one with Carson was yesterday. He picked playing at the park (the Sonic slushes were my idea). And we had a blast! 

It was fun to have some one-on-one time with Carson. Sometimes I feel like I hear “Play with me!” all day from the kids. (More like “pwaywifme!”) But there’s always things to do or we’re about to walk out the door – playtime with mommy often gets cut short.

But having the dedicated time set aside made all the difference. It was so easy to play with him and nothing else. We ran around the park (luckily we had it to ourselves) and pretended we were swimming away from sharks. Then we climbed on the “boats” and sailed to the North Pole, then to UtahColorado (since our road trip to both states this summer, driving/flying/boating there has been a popular play theme, and it’s become a compound noun. I guess to the kids you can’t visit one without going to the other). We played tag and ate slushes and talked.

I didn’t even get frustrated until the end, when Carson kept disobeying and sticking his playground-dirty fingers in his slush and then his mouth, trying to eat all the last Nerds. Ah, well. :) I think this is going to be a great tradition.

Carson and I were making cybugs (from Wreck-It Ralph) out of his magnet set. He insisted they were nice, though, not mean. So I put one of our cybugs on a magnet leash and led it around like a pet.

“No, Mom, that’s mean!” he insisted. “It needs to go back to its habitat!” I love it when your kids use smart vocabulary words you didn’t teach them. :)   

We didn’t get Easter outfits for the kids this year. Whoops! That’s what happens when Easter falls on General Conference Sunday. Which also happened to be Annelise’s birthday.

Anyway, our Easter tradition for several years now (inherited from Josh’s mom) has been to have a kind of Christ-centered Easter week. Each day we have a little devotional, including a small craft or activity, where we talk about an event in the Savior’s life that happened in the week leading up to the Resurrection. My favorite night is always the night we have a Jerusalem dinner. We eat on the floor and have a bunch of food the Savior might have eaten:

I love the week-long tradition and the spirit it brings into our home, and especially the gospel teaching it brings into our home. My favorite holiday has always been Christmas, but in the past few years, I think it’s been switching to Easter.

I know this post is late, but I wanted to post it anyway!

A few months ago my mom took me and the kids strawberry picking at a strawberry farm called Froberg’s. We got a ton of delicious strawberries and had a great afternoon. :)

Carson’s apparently confused that he can’t hear the sound of the ocean.