It's Official...

We're a mini-van family.

Wait, no... we got a mini-van in our first 6 months of marriage, long before we had any children.  We liked our mini-van.  Can you tell, I've been very amused in the past year or so as many of our friends have reluctantly become mini-van families with the arrival of their 3rd baby?  At any rate, we've had ours for awhile and with the amount of long distance travel we do, we'd rather have a vehicle with fewer miles on it.  Plus, it was looking like it would be quite a challenge to fit 3 carseats across the back seat.  So...

It's official we're a full-size passenger van family!  We traded in the Caravan for a 12-passenger on Monday.  The boys love it.  It's a truck!  Definitely more spacious.  Cullen, is just not thrilled with the white, which is apparently pretty much all you can find slightly used.  He's taking ideas for how to enhance the paint job.  A couple of Tiger Paws will be added as soon as possible.

Other news in pictures...

We celebrated Easter, not sure why the camera was blurry. 

Scott- 6 yrs old

Blaise, the camera "shy" goofball- almost 5 yrs old

Michael- 2 1/2 yrs old

Daniel- 17 months

All of us, even a noticeable Baby El.

The hunt is on...

They were so fast it was hard to get pictures at all.

He stopped to eat some beans.

"Michael, go get the last one."  He goes to the wall and looks blankly everywhere except where the egg is, so Scott and Blaise helped by pointing it out.  It took quite a bit of pointing!

Easter dinner with my sister... who was in (early) labor!

My newest niece Temperance and my sister, who heroically delivered med-free after many hours of labor (19 in the hospital, including some pitocin, plus essentially a whole day before that.)  

Interestingly enough, and not so much surprising... I seem to be able to take fewer pictures than I used to.

So even though there are only pictures from Sunday, we did do a lot of Easter celebrating over the weekend, including turning off the lights Friday afternoon to better "experience" the Easter story.  That was in addition to the same Easter basket devotion we do during Holy Week every year- the big boys were very excited about it... Daniel just wanted to grab everything out of everyone else's hands, and we also made the same "Resurrection" Cookies we make every year to put in the oven overnight (we had to lock the oven this year, they've never noticed that part of the directions before... but now we have a reader, hopefully I'll post about that in a couple of days.)

While I did bring the camera with me to meet baby Temperance, I also brought 4 little boys who were through the roof excited to meet their new baby cousin.  They each took 2 turns holding her during our 20 minute visit- somehow I can't help a 2 yr old hold a newborn and take a picture of them at the same time!   Even Daniel wanted to hold her and he somehow intuitively knew to be gentle... leaning his head close to hers to give her hugs (he mostly head bangs us, and is very into smacking and throwing things lately... we spend a lot of time lately reminding him to be "gentle".)  Blaise is totally captivated by her- they came by to visit yesterday and he would just sit and watch her and wait patiently, after being sent off to wash his hands, to hold her.  Scott was more aloof, but would suddenly stop what he was doing to come check on her and hug her.  Fortunately, Jessica had her video camera at the hospital, so somewhere there is video of them meeting her.