A Beautiful First Holy Communion

Is there anything sweeter than a First Holy Communion?  Grace celebrated hers this weekend and it was wonderful!

Grace at the grotto before Mass.

Grace with Father after Mass

This family picture was the best we could do . . . not great!  Bella was mad and PX had so much energy, he was threatening to explode.

I loved that all of the severs were the big brothers of the First Communicants.  It was so sweet to see!

Busy as Bees this Weekend

We had a busy,but fun-filled weekend.  Grace was thrilled to be invited to her new friends roller skating birthday party.  She had never been roller skating before, so it was quite an adventure.

Sunday we went to the annual "Bug Bowl" at Purdue.  There are many educational and cultural benefits to living next to a University and Bug Bowl is one of them!  We all learned so much and had a really great time.  Bella was even chosen to be a Cockroach Jockey at the Cockroach Races!  She was too shy to go up on her own, so I had to join her.

Andrew discovered the PU Butcher Shop and bought a stash of beef jerky.  Avila approved :)

We also learned all about beekeeping, something we have been pining over for a while now.  It just might be time to jump on the bandwagon.  Purdue offers wealth of information to the aspiring beekeeper as well!

M exciting score of the day was when I convinced Andrew to attend the sheep shearing demo and ask if he could have the wool (for his crazy wife).  We smelled like barn for the rest of the day as we hauled our enormous stash of wool around, but it was totally worth it!

Sunday evening we attended a fundraiser dinner for the Wabash Valley Youth Symphony.  It's an annual dinner held at a locally owned Indian restaurant.  The food is amazingly yummy AND they do free henna!  Annie and Martin went with us and we had so much fun.  The henna girl had to yell at me once for laughing too much and thus shaking and making her job a little more difficult.  

Easter Baskets

 I mentioned before that I participated in an Easter craft swap over at This Cosy Life.  It was great fun!  I made knitted wool eggs and peg gnomeys.  When I went to take pictures, my batteries died after one shot.  So this pretty crummy shot is all I have!

 In return, I got a great stash of handmade creations.  They were used to fill the Easter "baskets" for the kids.

 Actually, in lieu of baskets this year, I used potted plants.  It was a fantastic comprimise!  I despise Easter grass, so I have been trying to come up with a viable alternative.

 I love the idea of growing pots of real grass, but I seriously lack the organization and forethought to make something like that a reality.

 Pretty purple potted pansies was the perfect solution!  I think this will be out new tradition.  The kids loved getting their very own flowers.  It was so fun and sweet to tuck gnomes and felt eggs under the flower leaves!

 Of course, when you pot them at 10:30 the night before, some kids get coffee cans or plastic cups instead of really pots!  Hopefully next year I'll do a better job!

 The kids looked lovely at Mass.  The girls wore their dresses from my brother in laws wedding last spring.  Thankfully, Christopher served Mass and it didn't matter so much when we discovered that his dress shirt was way too small . . . about 15 minutes before he had to be at the church.

 After Mass, we headed to my parent's for food and an egg hunt.  The cousins all had fun romping around in search of eggs!

Easter was also Izzy's fourth birthday!  Grace made special ice cream sundaes for everyone to celebrate.