Easter Holiday

For the Easter holiday this year, Scott & I decided to host a family dinner at our house.  We decided on a day, the menu and activities for the kids.  Before I get into the details of the dinner, I have to talk about something that happened earlier in the week.

I often take naps on the couch and have never had a problem with it, until now.  Last Monday night (25th of March) I was taking a nap on the couch and when I went to sit up, I felt this sharp pain on the right side of my back. It hurt, but I didn't really think too much of it until I tried to go to bed.  I woke up about every hour and threw up twice throughout the night.  Despite Scott's warnings, I went to work anyway thinking I'd be able to handle it.  For the first time teaching, I left work early.  My back was causing so much pain that I was grimacing throughout the first three class periods.  I decided to talk to the office and tell them I was leaving and because I'm pregnant, I was bawling as I was talking.  I went home, took a shower, called the doctor and went straight to sleep.  I took the next day off of school as well to just rest and it was really nice.  The baby doctor said it was nothing related to baby and that I should go to an InstaCare to find out more about my back.  I didn't want to go by myself, so I waited until Friday (I went back to school Thursday, but had the day off Friday) to go.  The doctor there just said that it was indeed a strained muscle and he couldn't do much for me since I was pregnant, but that stretches, heat & ice and Tylenol were the best options.

I am happy to say that my back is feeling 10x better than it did that Monday night.  It has been a struggle and I'm glad it's feeling better because my spring break is almost up and I have to go back to school soon!  I would not want to teach with that back pain ever again.

Anyways, the back issue did make planning for the Easter party hard as Scott had to do a lot of cleaning and prep work.  We had our dinner at noon on Saturday (March 30th), so I guess you could call it lunch, not dinner.  We had a ham, funeral potatoes, salad, vegetables, rolls and a fruit salad.  The food was all delicious and I'm glad that family was willing to help bring some.  I made dessert and we bought a ton of candy for an egg hunt for the kids.

I made these carrot patch cupcakes from the Our Best Bites website.  I thought they turned out rather cute!  The carrot is made from an orange Starburst and half of a green jelly bean.

Scott & Kyle made these sweet bird's nests, which were a fun little treat.

For the kids, we had them dye eggs and an egg hunt where they also decorated their own bag.  The kids were entertained and they sure enjoyed all the candy they got in the eggs!  We filled them pretty full.  I tried to be a photographer, but my back started hurting from working in the morning and I just needed to rest a lot of the time.  Here are the pictures that I did get!

I'm glad that the weather was nice and it was fun to have family over.  I love our house and how much space we have now to be able to do things like this.  Thanks for a fun Easter holiday family!

Projects

With the nice weather, we have been working on the inside of the house and the outside.  Scott is so excited to get going on yard work that we've already bought a combined apple tree (5 different apples on one tree), a few raspberry bushes and fertilized the yard.  We want to plant some more flowers, rose bushes, strawberries and a fruit cocktail tree!  I'm glad that Scott gets excited about yard work and I know it will take time to reap some of the rewards of what we planted, but I'm glad we're getting a good start.

Last year, we bought some tulips and needed to get them planted.  I worked on weeding the area and then let Scott plant the tulips.  Oh, I should have known better.  Scott told me that he planted the tulips in a star shape around the tree and I really didn't believe him.  Okay, I didn't want to believe him.  Well, there is proof now!!  Our tulips are sprouting and the star shape is more obvious than ever.  It actually is fun to go out and see that star shape out front.  Here's a picture:

On the inside of the house, we have two painted rooms down!  The nursery has its final coat of purple on and it looks great!  It changes the room so much and I love peeking in to look at it.  I know I posted pictures on a post before and who knows if you'll be able to see a difference, but here's an after picture.

The second room that got painted is the bathroom upstairs.  This post about the seashell wreath I made shows some pictures of the what the bathroom looked like before.  We bought a nice blue to paint to go along with our beach theme.  Here are the after pictures:

Looks great, right?!

Now it is time to slowly start putting the nursery together.  The hardest part for me will be spending money to put the room together!  I'll keep you updated as we slowly start getting pieces to put it together.