Finally Finished!

Three months after the big storm, and after 3 nights in a hotel, our house is FINALLY done! I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves!

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Although it doesn't really show up in the pictures, one of the other things we did was get rid of the outdated popcorn ceiling and instead have it textured and painted. It all looks so good, and we're SO happy to finally have our house back!

8 Years

On April 6th Andrew and I celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary (the 7th was the 11th anniversary of our first date!). We had a big weekend, sans kids, planned. Of course, when you've got little guys, things don't always go as planned. We had it all arranged that the boys would go to Grandma and Grandpa B's on Friday night to be picked up Sunday, giving us a glorious, and much needed, break for the entire weekend. Unfortunately, Joshua's tummy had other plans. Friday morning he started saying that his tummy hurt. We chalked it up to excitement about going to Grandma and Grandpas and sent him off to school. Turns out it was more than excitement. He ended up throwing up twice that day. Darn it! So we decided to keep the boys home Friday night and see where we were Saturday morning. I was pretty bummed to not get the break I so longed for, but what can you do? Thankfully, Saturday morning Joshua was totally back to normal, so we kicked them out and shipped them off, very thankful that things turned around to give us some kid-free time.

We spent the day Saturday getting caught up on some housework that is so hard to do with the kiddos around. Andrew worked on replacing the wood trim on the chimney, and I worked at doing some much needed cleaning on the inside. It may not sound like much of a party, but it just feels good to actually get something accomplished!

The real fun began later. One of our favorite musicians, Derek Webb, was playing at a church in Gilbert, so after a yummy early dinner at Chino Bandito, we went to enjoy the show. And what an amazing show it was! It was open seating and we ended up in the second row! The concert was so different than any other show I've seen. It was all acoustic, and was only his voice and his guitar, which he can do some amazing things with. He's just outstanding. Because it was an intimate setting, he pretty much just had his song book and was letting people call out requests! It was so cool and he played most of our favorite songs. It was a great night!

Although it didn't start out exactly as planned, we ended up having a great time, and a wonderful anniversary. Hard to believe it's been 8 years!

Easter 2010

It's easy to get caught up in all the fun of Easter, with the eggs, and chocolate bunnies. But this year, I felt the impact of the true meaning of Easter more than ever before. Maybe it was the incredibly joyful and powerful songs we sang at church Easter weekend (I was able to participate in 4 of the 6 services, and each time the songs touched my heart so deeply, I couldn't help but smile so big my cheeks were sore!), or the fact that we spent Good Friday watching The Passion of the Christ with our small group, really bringing to life the incredible suffering endured out of pure love, and the awesome power of the Resurrection. Whatever it was, this year I could definitely feel the Holy Spirit moving within me in pure celebration than ever before, and it was awesome!

But of course we did have lots of the traditional Easter fun as well! Our Easter festivities lasted the whole weekend long. On Saturday we colored our eggs...

... and made our annual Easter sugar cookies. The boys have gotten quite good at cookie decorating! Too bad I didn't get any pictures of them!

On Sunday afternoon Grandma and Grandpa B came over for dinner. The kids got their Easter baskets, did their Easter egg hunt and we grilled out some yummy steaks.

And of course Joshua had to round out the evening playing the Wii with Grandma! What a fun weekend! Happy Easter!