Celebrating Life

I think my back and I have finally recovered from our fabulous trip to Disney! I needed a vacation after my vacation. The last couple of weeks we have been celebrating some very important lives...my dad's and Jesus. (I know Dad will like being paired up with the Big guy!) We celebrated Dad's birthday two weeks ago with a trip to see the Georgia Bulldogs play in their Spring scrimmage game. Even though he is a die hard Gator, Dad was willing to join us in Athens to spend some time with the kids and grandkids. We had a great time! Well, most of us, poor little Nolan was not feeling so well and he and Katie had to leave early. We watched the game, saw Hairy Dog and then had a post-game tailgate on campus. The kids found these huge magnolia trees and Trip finally got to climb a tree. He has been begging me to find a tree he can climb and we finally did! It was a great day! After all we've been through with Dad's health the last couple of years, it just makes each moment we get to celebrate him and his life that much more special! Here's to another healthy year (and more, and more...)!

Last week we celebrated the life of Jesus all week! Even though a lot that we do to "celebrate" Easter has nothing to do with His life and resurrection, it's still fun to share in the other activities with the kids. They each had an egg hunt at school. Mady's little class got to dye eggs in class and then look for 3 candy filled eggs and 2 dyed eggs. It went fairly fast! Trip's class, on the other hand, each had twelve eggs to find with the first letter of their name on it. It took a good deal longer. And, poor Trip only found 11 eggs with a "T" on them. He was devastated. Fortunately, his teacher had an extra egg and once the treats were brought out he moved on. TJ took a couple hours off work and came down to join us for the egg hunts and lunch afterwards. Trip and Mady both LOVE it when Daddy comes to their stuff! They were both so surprised and excited when they saw him. Our second egg hunt took place at our church on Saturday. I am in charge of this event, so I had to be there early to set up. We took my car to the shop for its service the night before, so we had one car for the day. TJ and the kids dropped me off to set up and headed out to Target to play in the toy section. Is there anything better than the toy section? I don't know which was more fun the egg hunt, or the toys at Target. This year at our egg hunt, we added a jump house. So, the kids jumped, hunted, jumped some more, played on the playground and had lunch! Then, we went to Trip's t-ball game. It was a busy, busy, fun day! We got home at 3:30, no one had naps, so the kids and I rested on the couch and watched the Princess and the Frog, while sweet TJ cleaned up the house for our Easter Sunday guests and grilled out chicken for us. Our third egg hunt was on Sunday morning at our house. The Easter bunny came to our house and left baskets with toys and hid eggs around the house. I remember looking for Easter eggs with my brother and racing to make sure I found more than he did. But, sweet Trip did quite the opposite. The first egg he found was purple (Mady's favorite color), so he gave it to her and went on to find more eggs. I was shocked! Mady was so excited about the purple egg, she would've been happy to stop there. We went to church that morning and then came home to have lunch with our friends and their kids. Then, we all took naps! Well, all of us except Trip. It was a crazy, fun, busy weekend! But, most importantly, it was a weekend filled with opportunities to tell the kids of the wonderful love of Jesus! And, how even though it is sad that he had to die on a cross, he rose again and lives forever as our savior! He is risen indeed!!