The Saturday 7

I have a lot to share this week!

1. A few weeks ago, a lady from church posted this video to our private "Women's Ministry" facebook group with the caption, "should we?"

It was quickly deemed that we indeed should. Someone picked a shirt, shared the link, and the women of our rural church wiped out Old Navy's selection. 😂 We decided on Easter Sunday for the big reveal, since that was a day we'd be more likely to convince our husbands to wear something specific. For my part, I was a little nervous about convincing Justin because he's picky about clothes. But it was a shirt that I knew he'd like, and Levi had a matching one so I told him I wanted to match for Easter and he went with it. I seriously had to bite my cheeks the whole way to church to stop from spontaneously smiling at what was to come. As soon as we pulled into the parking lot, we saw two men wearing the same shirt pointing and laughing at each other. Justin said, "Oh no" thinking it was bad that he matched the two of them. I just laughed and didn't say a word. I think he caught on pretty quickly once we walked inside and noticed almost every other guy wearing the same shirt, but he's not overly expressive, and I was just trying not to laugh too hard. 

I heard there were about 80 participants between the two services, not counting the little boys who matched their dads.

We even managed to make it work in our immediate family. All of Niki's boys came to the Easter service, but none of them saw each other beforehand, so they were none the wiser. I snapped a pic after lunch:

Levi was the most upset. He kept saying, "Why did you prank us??" Lol. I just kept thinking that it's amazing how much power wives have and how that power could so easily be abused . . . mwhahaha! (For the record, Justin said he'll never trust me to suggest he wear something specific ever again. Lol.)

2. Easter itself was great. The kids got their Easter baskets in the morning. I've been scaling back the past few years, so they each got a $10 gift and a few small pieces of candy. I knew they'd get plenty more treats later in the day.

We made our traditional resurrection rolls for breakfast:

And my steroid was finally working well enough that I was able to go to church. I even made it through the whole service without a single coughing fit! 

After church, we all convened at Niki's for lunch and an Easter egg hunt. My incredibly sweet, generous sister buys and stuffs a million eggs for the kids. They were each allowed to find 25 eggs, so she wasn't stingy!

The littles were napping and had their own hunt later.

3. I made it back to work on Monday. I only had a couple minor coughing fits while reading to my 3rd graders, so it was a successful day. The steroid has done its job to stop the coughing, but I'm not crazy about the side effects. It makes me constantly flushed and ridiculously exhausted. I thought steroids would make me energetic and aggressive. Instead they just made me hot and tired. Worth it to stop coughing and be able to sleep in my own bed again after a week of fitful sleeping on the couch!

4. I'm chugging along in my final college semester, and have found myself afflicted with "senioritis." I think it's silly that I have to take math and early childhood development, so I'm not killing myself to get perfect grades! The nice thing about my math class is that you can try each problem as many times as you want without penalty. Sometimes if I get it wrong the first time, I try a couple more times to figure it out. But sometimes I say, "I really don't know this and don't care enough to try harder" so I leave it wrong! 😲 Look at me, throwing caution to the wind! 

5. On Friday, Lucy participated in the school's talent show. She and a friend originally planned to sing a duet together, but then the friend decided she wanted to do a dance with a third friend instead. So they compromised and had Lucy sing the song while they danced. She wasn't too sure about singing a solo, but she's been practicing non-stop and she truly has a beautiful voice and some natural talent. She refused to let us invite anyone to the show, but did let me record it. (She doesn't want it shared, but I have it just in case she becomes famous someday!) She did so awesome. She was confident, on key, and looked like a natural even though she said she was shaking like crazy. Haha. I wish she would've projected a little more so everyone could really hear her, but I'm half deaf and could hear, so I think that's a good sign. I'm just so proud of her for doing it!

6. Then today was Levi's first soccer game! We finally got a beautiful day (it made it to 80 this afternoon!!) so it was the perfect first soccer experience. He's on a 5/6 year old team and this was the first game for all of them, so it was hilarious. They have no idea what they're doing. Half the time they were kicking toward the wrong goal, one girl kept stopping mid-play to pick the ball up with her hands and set it down in front of her feet, the poor ref couldn't have been older than 12 and didn't know what she was doing, and Levi kept running over to us to narrate events that we'd seen firsthand. He actually did really well. He knew what was going on, participated with a good attitude, played hard, kept up the whole time even though he's not used to that much physical activity, and even scored a goal! It was adorable and I hope the beginning of a long soccer career for him. 

Levi's number 35. And see - I wasn't exaggerating about the ref! (In the green)

7. A few more pics . . .

A couple of cuties on the sidelines today

Soaking up the sun in the pickup lane on Thursday.

It has been such a gorgeous day today. We sat outside at Levi's game for an hour, then went to the park for another hour. Apparently my old lady skin can't handle that. I'm way redder than it comes across in this picture. My face is tomato red!