Easter

I wanted to really focus on Christ and His resurrection for Easter, instead of the Easter Bunny. It may have worked. However, the Easter Bunny did bring Easter baskets that morning.

On our drive up to Grammy and Grampy's we read the Easter story out of The Gospel of Luke. It's a lot longer than the Christmas story, but the drive is kind of long too, so it was ok. The kids listened surprisingly well. Also, throughout the last week we have been re-learning our two Easter songs, "Did Jesus Really Live Again," and "Christ is Risen."  We learned them last year, but they are realy the only two Easter songs I know for kids, so we learned them again. It was fun singing them. Even Abigail sings along. She especially likes the end of "Christ is Risen" when she sings, "Christ ist erstanden, Christus mein Freund" (Christ is risen, Christ, my friend).

Then we stopped off at the cemetery where my Grandma and Grandpa are buried. We used to live with them. Joshua doesn't remember Grandpa (Joshua was only 10 months old when Grandpa passed away) but he still remembers Oma (that's what we called her). He says he still remembers her funeral and everything. So we were able to visit their grave and talk about what Christ's resurrection actually means for us.

Up at Grammy and Grampy's we ate a huge delicious Easter brunch and went to church with them. Elder Holland wasn't there. I was kind of disappointed but kind of relieved. (I dont' know why, it kind of stresses me out and puts me on my guard to be around an Apostle. Two years ago when we were there for Easter he started talking to me in the hallways - I was pacing around with my newborn Abigail - and I was so nervous I didn't even know what to say and I felt really dumb. What do you say to an Apostle?)

The men making brunch!

After church the Christensen's came up and we played! We searched for Easter baskets, we raced little duckies, and we had a fabulous Easter dinner, after which we played some more. It was a lot of fun.

Follow up: I did read the four Gospels again the week leading up to Easter. I actually finished Easter evening. Having three kids leaves me with much less reading time than when I only had two. So that was something special for me. At Christmas, when I did this before, my favorite gospel was John. But this time I was reading the Joseph Smith inspired version and I really really enjoyed Luke. I also have to admit I didn't have a lot of time to read and FOCUS so I'm sure I still would have loved John, but I felt like Luke was so enlightening. It was a treat.

Just a photo of Lukas because he's adorable. This is what he did on Easter.

Also, I asked Abigail the other day why we have Easter. She said, because it is Easter time. And then I asked, well, what happened to Jesus? "Jesus had lots of owies" and then did he die? "yea." but what happened after that? "Then Jesus was resurrected and now all the children can be resurrected too!"  She's a smart cookie.

Soups

Derek got a BlendTek for his birthday. Since they cost an arm and a leg, we've decided to get our money's worth out of it by using it multiple times a day. Usually 3 times, sometimes 4. Derek is about to use it actually right now as I type. Then I might go use it again just for fun.  You may have heard of BlendTek from the U-Tube videos, "Will it Blend?"  I've never seen the videos on U-Tube, just on our BlendTek user guide DVD, which we actually just watched today for the first time.

Anyway, so I've been making soups. Some better than others. Some more photogenic than others. My first soup was roasted butternut squash and shallot soup. No photo. Way super delicious - probably because I'd never used fresh ginger before and I probably put in twice as much as was called for. I didn't even know I liked ginger.

Soup number two was a carrot soup. Somewhat bland compared to the Ginger soup, er, I mean Butternut Squash/Shallot soup. But still tasty.

Please excuse the less than appetizing photo

Soup number three was a tomato soup. Definitely took some getting used to. The tomato soup tastes like tomatoes. For some reason, that really threw me off. Campbell's tomato soup tastes like salt. That was what I was expecting. Nope. No salt in this soup. Mostly just tomatoes. I added soup chopped avocado (because everything tastes better with avocado, it's fancy) and that helped. The more I ate of this soup, the more I liked it. I might make it again next week.

that is an unattractive soup!

Soup number four is a Cheezy Broccoli Soup. Take a look at these photos and tell me, how much fat and how many calories you think are in this soup?

I have no idea how much fat and how many calories I ate that night - although I do know I ate maybe 3 servings of soup. But I do know that however much you guessed, you were most likely much too high. There is no cheese in this soup. The "cheese" sauce is actually just carrots, potatoes, onion, some cashews, salt, and nutritional yeast. Say hello to BlendTek, throw in the broccoli, and you've got a Cheezy Broccoli Soup that, although very filling (ok, maybe it was the three bowlfulls) is not very fattening. It's actually good for you.

Next up - Tortilla Soup. (Saw the recipe on the BlendTek user DVD)
Recipes to whoever wants them.

H and Easter

H and Easter naturally go together, if you didn't know, because rabbit in German starts with an H. First we made Hase Huete.

Then we learned an Easter bunny poem:

Osterhaeschen dort im Grase
Wackelschwaenzchen, Schnuppernase
Mit den langen braunen Ohren
Hast ein Osterei verloren!
Zwischen Blumen seh ich's liegen.
Osterhaeschen, darf ich's kriegen?

Translation: Easter bunny in the grass, wiggling tail and wiggling nose, with the long brown ears, you lost an Easter egg! I see it lying between the flowers. Easter bunny, may I get it? (obviously much more poetic in the original language.)

We read a couple of Hase (rabbit) books. Peter Rabbit, Benjamin Bunny, The Flopsy Bunnies, and A Fierce Bad Rabbit.

Hmmmm... what else. We made a Henne snack. Or more like a Peep. This is  not an original idea. I was reminded of it online and decided we would make it. I happened to have a few peeps that someone had given us and we hadn't eaten and we already had the robin's eggs.

We colored eggs.

And we had an Easter Egg Hunt. I told the kids I was going to give the Easter Bunny their eggs (they'd been playing with them for a few days already) and ask him the hide them outside. But the kids couldn't come with me, and they probably wouldn't see the Easter Bunny because he is afraid of children. He's actually quite an Angsthase, if you know what I mean. Hopefully somebody out there does.

 This last photo is of the kids devouring their goodies from inside the eggs. We're slowly weaning everyone off sugar before we start a sugar fast, so instead of candy in their eggs, I put nuts and dried fruit. I don't think the kids cared that they weren't getting chocolate. They ate their snacks so fast, you would have thought it WAS chocolate.

We decided to do all the Easter Bunny Easter stuff before Easter, and let the religious part of Easter have that day to itself. We've definitely talked multiple times about why we really have Easter, and the children know what the holiday is all about. They do amaze me with their understanding sometimes.  I think it is cute how Abigail puts things into her own words. After tomorrow I will post about our actually Easter Day activities. I am kind of excited. It feels like Christmas Eve tonight. And it should. At least it should be exciting and eventful and joyful. Because without Easter, Christmas doesn't really mean much does it

April, G, Flowers

For the first part of April we focused on Flowers and the letter G. One of my favorite activities was going on walks in the warm weather and watching the flowers grow - we could watch their progress almost from day to day. Unfortunately, the "April showers" finally caught up with us and we haven't spent much time outside in the last week or so. boo.

We made "Das ganz grosse G" (the really big G) I have included some detail photos so all the artists out there can fully appreciate the majesty of this G.

We made a Blumen Garten (Flower Garden) and a Gemuse Garten (Vegetable Garden)

We bought some flowers to actually plant, however as mentioned above, the weather hasn't been cooperating. We also found some sprouted apple seeds in our apples the other day so we decided to plant those as well. I hope they grow!

Birthday in German is Geburtstag and we definitely had many of those to celebrate, although due to time constraints and crying children, we had to celebrate them in different ways. Happy Birthday to Tante Heidi, Grampy, Grandpa Bob, Grandma Carolyn, and Papa! Papa said he didn't want anything for his birthday - not even a celebration, so the kids and I made a huge "Happy Birthday Papa!!!!" poster and taped it to his office door. Then we hid chocolates all around his office. We made a special birthday dinner and his gifts were some honey roasted peanuts, the remaining chocolates we hadn't hidden, and a birthday card I made him. So you don't think we are THAT cheap, Derek and I also bought him a Blend-tek a few weeks ago. That wasn't cheap at all.

Here are just a few more flowers we made. The flowers inspired Joshua to create something else. I asked him what it was and he said, "well, it's this one and this one and this one," pointing to the pom poms and cotton balls he glued on. Note: these flowers were going to be daffodils but I forgot to draw on the yellow petals behind the muffin tin cup so instead they are just muffin tin cup flowers. They are also supposed to match our poem below.

And Joshua (and I suppose Abigail to some degree) learned the following flower poem (Gedichte) minus all umlauts (the kids learned the umlauts, but I haven't figured out how to type them in with blogger):

Das Blumchen schlaft in Garten
Tief in der Erde Schoss
Der Regen klopft und weckt es:
"Wach auf und werde gross!"

Das Blumchen reckt und streckt sich
Wachst hoch und schlank hinauf
Die Sonne kommt und warmt es
Bald bluht sein Hutchen auf.

Da freut sich unser Blumchen
Es wiegt sich froh im Wind
Und schwenkt sein gelbes Kopfchen
Und grusst ein jedes Kind.

Translation in a nutshell - a happy yellow flower, with the help of some rain and the sun, bloomed in the garden and looks like its greeting all the children as it swings in the wind.

And of course some books. We were a little less academic and more pre-schooly in this subject, so we didn't get into too much depth of how the seed opens and grows, but we did talk about it and I think with the reinforcement of watching our apple seeds grow and discussing it, the idea will solidify.

Delicious

There are some other posts from tonight that might actually be more interesting than this one, but this post is definitely the most delicious!

Some of you may be wondering why I am posting photos of acorn squash on my blog. That is a great question. I think I'll go to bed now! (but don't forget to look at the other posts - there are about 3 more new ones.)

couldn't resist

If it is still "in" to make slideshows of the bride and groom to show during their wedding reception by the time Lukas gets married, I will have a hard time picking out which one of these photos to use... and I'm sure he'll be embarrassed no matter which one I choose.