Grandma's for Easter

I am sure I have mentioned it before, but we absolutely love living closer to Grandma and Grandpa after all those years of living 15 hours away. It is nice to be able to visit with them regularly and hear my dad preach -- especially on those special Sunday's -- like Easter. So, the plan was to go to Grandma's for Easter. We were going to do standardized testing for homeschool Monday to Wednesday, and then drop of the dogs at the kennel, pack, and have Olivia one year pictures Thursday and leave Thursday afternoon for the 6 hour drive. Whew . . . makes me tired just thinking about it, but maybe that is because it ended up being a WHOLE LOT MORE COMPLICATED.

Monday was a great day of testing. Everything went really well, as did music and karate and soccer practise. Then, I checked in with the jury duty line. Wouldn't you know it I had to go to jury duty Tues. It ended up being very interesting except for the tremendous stress it put on the week. I actually got selected to serve on the Jury for a one day trial that last two days. LOL. My good friend Beth watched the little ones -- THANKS AGAIN, and the older two stayed at home in the morning and went to Beths after they finished their school and lunch. The long of it is way too long for this BLOG, but the short of it was: The case was a child abuse case. We found him Not Guilty, and there is not a doubt in my body that we did the right thing.

Since I so obviously accomplished little to nothing inside my house on Tuesday and Wednesday, Thursday was CRAZY. I managed to get the dogs to the kennel, get Zeke's school work at a good place to let it be until the next week, and get extremely frustrated with what Russell had NOT managed to get done Tuesday and Wednesday. Then, Olivia had her pictures which turn out awesome, and we hurriedly packed the truck (the Lincoln is having maintenance issues) and headed out the door to Grandma's

But wait a minute . . . in the midst of Jury Duty on Tuesday, Chris called to tell me he was coming home Monday night after Easter. What?!? We decided that instead of changing travel plans, we would surprise the boys, and he would just be here when we got back Tuesday afternoon.

The trip to Grandma's was fun as usual. We did a little clothes shopping for the kids on Friday. I our hurry out the door, I packed no T-shirts for Russell. He needed new ones anyway, and thankfully Kohl's was having a sale. Then, on Saturday, we all met with a friend of mine from High School (Michelle). It was great to meet her husband and son. After lunch with Michelle and her family, we met up with Stephen and Kristi and headed to Jane Ann's birthday party. It was a bit windy out but all and all a beautiful day for a party. The kids had fun, and everyone went home tired. On Easter we enjoyed Sunday School and Church at Grandpa's church. It was very nice, and then we went to Great-Grandma and Grandpa's farm. The food was good and the conversation was pleasant (until it turned to politics --LOL). I was pooped when we got home that night, but Mom and I worked for about an hour on stripping wall paper out of her kitchen. YUC -- I will never put up wall paper in my home. Tuesday morning we got up, got packed, and got going. It was so nice to see all their happy surprised faces when they saw Daddy was home.