iPhoneography: Childhood Unplugged

My friend combined a collection of iPhone clips into this short video. It's a little glimpse into how just about every day ends around here; friends, water and running galore. We really love our neighborhood if you can't tell.

Spring Break in the Desert

We took a quick trip to the desert for Spring Break. It seemed kind of funny to be leaving a vacation destination to go to another vacation destination one state over. But it was nice to visit family and enjoy our typical Arizona activities. I especially appreciated the break from housework and homework and I desperately needed some undisturbed time to catch up on work.

We have our Arizona routine down; bike rides, daily pool dips, dinner on the patio, trips to various playgrounds and an afternoon at the Fairmont. 

Nash officially reached the 42" mark which meant he could go down the gigantic water slides.

He was just a tad excited about that.

Blake and Nash were little fish in my parents' backyard pool.

It took a lot of convincing to get them out of the water, but I loved the chats they had while drying out on the lawn chairs every evening. 

Crew napped during most of pool time but he loved eating outside.

No trip to the desert would be complete without visiting the world famous fountain. 

Crew was over the moon about the ducks as usual. We picnicked by the lake and he thought it was the funniest thing in the world when we fed the ducks some leftover bread.

We could barely pull him away to eat once he locked eyes with those ducks.

The splash pad happened to open for the season the day before we drove home, so we made sure to get our fill.

I wasn't sure what Crew would think of it because Nash did not love water spraying at him at this age. But Crew dove right in with pure joy.

Somehow Finn didn't end up in any pictures besides the ones with the beach ball, but he didn't skip a beat as his normal, smily self during his first trip to the desert. 

We never really stray from our typical activities at Grandma and Grandpa's house. There's no need to switch it up when we have a good routine down pat. And it wasn't too hard to leave, knowing that we were headed back to more nice weather, pools and the ocean. 

Pre-Easter Activities

We kicked off the week of Easter by spending a day at our city's spring festival.

It seemed like the whole town was out to collect eggs.

The egg hunts were divided by age. Thank goodness for Troy who distracted Crew while he peered through the fence and watched his older brothers participate in their egg hunt.

I don't think Crew was too amused by the collection of stickers he gathered during the toddler egg hunt. He much preferred the candy from his brothers' eggs.

And the balloons that were just out of reach.

But his favorite part of the festival was hands down the bubble table.

Finn zoned out with his little thumb locked in place the majority of the day.

The boys enjoyed climbing through bounce houses and playing carnival games and we loved bumping into many families we've started to get to know. Our city has somewhat of a small town feel and I love that. I bought a double stroller from someone a few weeks ago and I've already run into her at the pool, the school and the spring festival.

We continued our Easter prep a few days later with some families in our neighborhood. They set up an egg-dying extravaganza and all we had to do was show up with a carton full of hard boiled eggs.

Blake sported the remnants of the tattoos he gathered at the festival. 

The only problem with dying eggs is that small hands seem to absorb the color better than the eggs do.

Finn was our official egg guard.

The other boys became way more interested in the mini cupcakes.

I didn't get around to putting up any Easter decor this year or incorporating any of our usual traditions, so I'm grateful for a town and friends who made my job easy. For the first time since we've been married, we aren't traveling or hosting family for Easter. It'll just be us, which means I need to go figure out how to cook a ham. I'm hoping to locate the lesson I usually give where we open eggs with symbols that represent the events leading up to the Resurrection. And I'm thinking that our Easter weekend will include a trip to the beach in between our church's General Conference sessions as well. We're looking forward to taking it easy this year and soaking up inspiration and nice weather and each other.