Easter weekend!

We had a fun Easter weekend! It started out Saturday morning with my parent's neighborhood Easter Egg Hunt. We invited Cousin Lilly to come play for the day, so she joined us for the hunt :)

This is a picture of Evie before Lilly showed up. She was beyond excited!

The girls with the Easter Bunny. Evie looked a bit uneasy in this picture ;)

Cute girls!!

Can't wait for it to start!

And there they go! Evie had a whole basket full. I was feeling quite proud until I heard a mom next to me telling her kid that they could only get 12 each. Oops! I had to tell Evie to put a bunch of hers back.   Maybe next year we will find one that doesn't have limits on the amount you can get. Although, it is nice for everyone to be able to get some :)

She was tuckered out that night after playing ALL day long, outside, in the beautiful 73 degree weather! I love when the kids play outside :)

The next morning brought a small basket from the Easter Bunny for each of the kids, and a new Eadter dress for Evie and a new suit for Zayne :) WHY is it near impossible to get ONE picture with BOTH kids smiling at the SAME TIME?!!! Story of my life, I tell ya!

Evie was less than cooperative for taking pictures. She was done by the beginning. They are in for a big surprise because I have family pictures planned for this weekend :) 

I love this top picture because it looks like Zayne is dead or something and this bottom picture has Evie's feeling written all over it; D-O-N-E

And I thought I would push my luck and make my mom take our picture standing... As you can see, that didn't work out very well ;)

The cousins came over for an Easter dinner and Egg hunt! The kids had a blast and were able to get as many eggs as they could find; no limits on this hunt!!

Zayne loved it!!

One of my older brother and his family were out of town, and my oldest sister is in Alaska, so it was just these guys! We sure missed the rest of the family :(

Evie has this new blank look/smile going on in all of her pictures. It's like she is on auto pilot when I say, "Say cheese!"

My sweet kiddos :)

Owen refused to get in the bottom picture. He said, and I quote, "no more pictures!" Haha! Remember, family pictures next weekend ;)

We had a wonderful Easter together! I had to lead the primary kids in singing 2 songs in sacrament meeting and I was a little nervous because we didn't have church for 2 weeks. We had general conference and then stake conference. I was afraid they would forget everything, but they did so well! I was really proud of them!

I'm very grateful for the atonement and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Im grateful for the testimony I have that He lives and loves me. I'm grateful for the beautiful little family that I have been so very blessed with. I'm grateful that we can be an eternal family because of Him. Happy Easter!

Continued birthday celebrations!

We had several more celebrations for Evie's birthday! We went out to Owen's parents house and Grandma Johnston surprised both of the kids with these fun bunny ears. They loved them! Wore them for several days straight. I totally forgot about them for the Easter egg hunt :( next time! And Zayne has no pants on in this picture because his cup leaked out all over his jeans on the way over to their house!

Evie blowing out her candles :)

I made this cake a total of 3 times. I was growing a wee bit tired if it. It made her birthday extra special, so it was totally worth it!

Silly girl. She really wanted to wear those bunny ears :)

This picture makes me laugh! Zayne loves this pacifier, even though he only took one a few times in his infancy. The ears totally complete the look!

Owen's mom gave us this bear when Evie was younger. It's Owen's very first teddy bear. Apparently he had quite the love for them. Owen acts gruff, but deep inside he's just a giant teddy bear lover ;)

We celebrated Evie and her cousin, Felicity's bday at chuck e cheese with my side of the family. We had barely walked in and turn around to see that Zayne had disappeared. I finally found him as evidenced in the above picture, trying to play a race car game!

 

This kid LOVED every minute of our time spent there!

This was the only thing he didn't care for. He started getting scared when the monster truck rose high and started tilting back and forth. What is up with my kids?! Evie is deathly afraid of it!

He loved this hot cocoa mug ride. 

Evie wanted her picture with Chuck E and Zayne did NOT! He couldn't get away fast enough! Ha!

3rd time making the cake. She still loved it! What can I say - I'm an awesome mom ;)

This picture makes me laugh! This appears to be some sort of table dance, but I assure you that wasn't what was going on! 

Evie had to showcase all of her toys from the party :) the Anna dress was her favorite! Thanks, Amy and Abe :)

She got a really fun felt board with some different scenes. The kids have loved playing with it!

Made another trip to Chuck E Cheese two days later because Owen's sister was in town for a few days and thought the kids would have fun there. They did have fun! And we one 100 tickets! It was pretty amazing!

Some of the cousin's from Owen's side of the family :) I love how Evie is checking out Chuck E's teeth in the above picture!

Ok, I love this girl! She is such a beauty!

Those curls! She gets these naturally platinum blonde highlights during the summer since she spends so much time out in the sun! Beautiful!

We celebrated Tessa's 2nd bday last Sunday! Her and Zayne are 3 weeks apart. This is a picture of all of the grand kids in the area, minus one.

 What is this? They look like a couple of show girls or something! The funny things that happen on a Sunday night at Grandma's house with the cousins!

So Owen had a second interview with one of the jobs he had an interview with last week. We should be hearing about a 3rd interview this week! Pray for us! The next step after that would be an I person interview. We are really hoping this one works out! Something sweet that Evie said this past week went like this: 

Me: "Evie, you can probably stop praying for xyz company to call daddy because I'm pretty sure that one is dead and out of the picture."

Evie: "Mommy, we can't give up! We have to just keep praying."

Love that girl :)

A new member of the family

This past Monday we said goodbye to our Nissan Altima......

And said hello to our new (to us) 2010 Chevy Equinox! We are loving it and all of the fun features it has. The best part about this car is that it has OUR name on it! Back story on that - after moving to Moses Lake we decided it was time to get a bigger car. After talking to our local banker at the Chase bank, she said we shouldn't have a problem getting a loan if we had a consigner and money to put down. Even though they knew we had just short sold our home back in Idaho. So we sold our Mitsubishi Lancer and went to the bank. The lady then informed us that we could NOT get a loan. So thanks to  our completely naive state of mind and Chase banks complete ignorance and stupidity, we had no vehicle for me to drive. Through many dramatic inclinations and tears on my part, and fear that we would never be able to make it home to visit in a car that we could pay 4k cash for on my parents part, they lovingly took out a loan in their name so that we could get a car. We made all of the payments and paid the insurance, it just wasn't in our name. And that is how the Altima came to be. It was a great car and we really loved it. We were trying to decide between a newer one of those and one of these equinoxes. This car happened to be in the right spot, at the right time, and at the right price :) Man, it's been a financial crisis for us for the past 5 years. It has been three years since we short sold our house and we are FINALLY getting our credit back up to where it needs to be. We are hoping this car loan helps it even more which will aid us in getting a home loan sometime down the road. Now, if we could just land that perfect job, maybe there could be some financial stability for us in the future! 

Owen had 2 phone screenings for 2 new jobs this past week. His resume has gotten him tons of interviews. I can't even count how many he has had in the past 12 months. We print out every job description that he applies for so he can have them for a reference point if and when he interviews for one. Our computer desk is covered in these job postings. I should have kept them all so I could count how many he has applied for. Surely something will work out soon. Sometimes you have to hear a lot of "no's" before you hear a "yes". He has been keeping busy with the job he has now. He will be getting lots of overtime with the nice weather. Owen has been working really hard for our family and I appreciate it so much! If only these companies could see what they are missing out on. Maybe someday we will look back on this time and think, "it wasn't that bad." I can honestly say that I have been happier living here in Boise and unemployed, than I ever was living in Moses Lake. I made lifelong friends there, but the homesickness never really went away. It was a longing to be back here that brought us back. Very grateful for that answer to our prayers :)