Leland turns 7

I guess Leland is getting to an age where she wants a legitimate birthday party, with friends, not just our family. I finally gave in and we settled on a party at home with several friends. She had 2 requests - butterfly cake and a pinata.

The wonderful thing about having fabulous friends is that when you feel so busy with life and work that you can't figure out when you will have time to make your daughters birthday cake, a friend offers to make the birthday cake for you and does a fabulous job! Thanks Heidi!

We ended up with 11 kids at the party and it was lots of fun. They made some crafts, played in the backyard with bubbles and played musical chairs.

Then it was time for the pinata. Screams and cheers could be heard down the street I am sure. It was loud and crazy and seemed to take forever to break it open. I'm sure the fact that Chuck would pull the rope so they couldn't reach it had a lot to do with it too.

We are so grateful for Leland in our family. She is very helpful and likes to think she is a grown up. She is a great leader and loves to be the "director" at all times. She loves school and loves to learn. We are so thankful that Heavenly Father sent her to our house to live.

County Fine Art Festival

Leland loves art. She was very excited when one of our art pieces was chosen to be displayed at the County Art Festival. It was a huge event where all types of artwork were displayed from every grade level of every school in the county.

Leland was very funny about explaining how one area of the the project she had messed up on and how she "fixed" the mistake. We were grateful that Nana was visiting for the weekend so she was able to go with us.

The girls were most excited about the face painting by some high school art students.

Bon Air Fun Run and 5k

Leland ran her school's 1 mile kids run. She had lots of fun running a race "like mom"

My mom and I ran the 5k which was lots of fun. This was my last preggo run (13 weeks) because I started having some numbness in one of my legs and the doc said no more races until next year.

Easter with Nana

The girls and I spent Easter weekend with my Mom. I've never had my girls dye eggs for Easter before, so my mom was excited to break out all her egg dying kits.

A lot of the dyes that she had were old and not working well, so we opted more for painting the eggs.

We went strawberry picking. Always fun.

We went to the community Easter Egg Hunt. It was set next to the water and was just gorgeous.

The Easter bunny that was there was pretty creepy. During the hunt, Charly found one of the bonus eggs, but she refused to go near that bunny to get her prize. Leland went and got it for her.

We took the ferry with some friends over to Aurora Fossil Museum. It was a cute little place including a fossil digging site filled with leftovers from a local phosphate mine. We found lots of shells and sharks teeth.

Topsail Island

We spent a few days in Topsail Island, NC with Chuck's family.
The whole crew.

Our girls. They loved having all the hair accessories from their aunts. I don't do the bows as big as your head like they do and the girls loved looking through them.

Our family

Grammy & Papa and their grandkids

The weather was not the best, but the cousins still had a great time.

This is where we told the family about our new baby. We put together these great reunion shirts. Everyone drew a self portrait of themselves. Our family is above the 'S' and we put a little stork by us. I was the one who printed the shirts, so the big reveal of the reunion shirts was also our announcement. It was great!

 

Chuck got up really early to take pictures of the sunrise. I enjoyed my sleep and enjoyed the sunrises through the 300+ pictures he took.

On our way home we stopped in New Bern, NC. It is such a cute little town.