Happy Easter!

Jess has been travelling to southern Alberta a lot over the past few months because his main (OK, only) client is the University of Lethbridge. Since it was spring break for the kids last week, we decided to join him on his southern trek and visit with Grammy Rose, Grandpa Ron and Uncle Paul (and Bella). We got to see Aunt Jayna and Uncle Travis too, so that was great.

While in Raymond, since it was the week before Easter, we decorated a bunch of eggs and then, as per McMullin family tradition, we drove out to the coulees just out of town, climbed up to the top of one without cows grazing on it, and threw the eggs down the hill. And tried not to get blown off the hill while doing it! It seemed extra windy that day.

When we got home (after enduring the torture of a 5 1/2 hour drive with a 15-month old who HATES being strapped into his carseat for longer than 20 minutes), we celebrated Easter with a low-key Easter egg hunt in the backyard and by listening to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and some excellent General Conference talks. The Easter Bunny doesn't visit our home (Maira was asked at playschool today if a big bunny came to her house and brought her candy and she looked at that lady like she was crazy!) For me, I just find it detracts too much from the true reason for celebrating Easter to make a big production of getting candy and toys from the Easter Bunny. But at the same time, those things are part of our culture and I don't want our kids to feel excluded so we still have some candy and games but the kids know full well that it's me and Jess giving them the candy. That's what works for us anyways.

Here's the backyard Easter egg hung (a big deal to have it outside instead of in the living room since our backyard is usually still pretty snowy at Easter).

And here are the kids in their Easter outfits that I sewed for them. For some reason, I feel compelled every Easter to sew them something new. I guess it's because my Grandma White used to sew me and my sister a new dress every Easter and mail it to us all the way from Spokane (to Ottawa) and it helped me feel connected to her then so I guess it helps me feel connected to her now too... Anyways, I didn't sew the entire outfits, just the boys' ties and the girls' skirts! And of course, Jess took the pictures.

We had a lovely Easter and I am so grateful for the reason we celebrate Easter: the Resurrection and Atonement of my Saviour.

Our newest baby (??)

Well, we've done it, we decided to adopt a dog. After years and years of persistent begging, Shae finally has gotten her wish. Our new dog is a schnoodle (I'd never heard of the breed before, it's a schnauzer/poodle cross) and he's 4 1/2 and his name is Howie. His current owner's fiance is allergic to Howie and so even though she loves him (the dog) to pieces, she love her fiance more and is giving Howie away. Her wedding isn't until May so we're just going have Howie over for a few sleepovers here and there until the end of April when he'll come live with us for good. Here are some pictures of our cute little dog:

And, here is some spring cleaning from my camera - when I was uploading the pictures of the dog, I found these pictures that are a little old but still worth posting:

And finally, this is a video of Maira singing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town". She sang it constantly all through the Christmas season and she does a pretty cute rendition of it so I thought I'd videotape it so I could put it on my blog...but then I forgot and it never made it up here at Christmas time so here it is, better late than never!

We've had some birthdays around here...

First, right after Christmas, my little baby Hudson turned one. Here is a series of pictures Jess took of Hudson enjoying his birthday cake:

Hudson was surrounded by a crowd of siblings and cousins while he unwrapped his presents but he really wasn't interested in his presents, he just wanted to play with the balloons.

And here are a couple of non-birthday pictures of Shae, Connor and Maira pretending that Maira is a queen, Connor a king and Shae is their very hardworking servant:

And now, here are some pictures from Maira's birthday. She turned 3 on January 19th. She loves princesses and Barbies right now so I decided to surprise her with a Barbie princess cake.

I think she liked the cake but her immediate response was "what's my Barbie doll doing inside that cake???" And then, "hey, you got my Barbie doll all messy and sticky!" She was much happier with the cake once I gave her back her Barbie!

Here she is wearing one of her presents from her Grandma, a Ukrainian shumka dancer headpiece.

She had a good birthday and she's absolutely thrilled to be 3 because I've been telling her for months that she can't go to school like Connor and Shae until she's 3. Luckily, the local playschool has an opening in their 3-year old class starting next week so now she only has 7 more sleeps until she gets to go to school too, she's so excited.

Finally, here's Maira's new quilt that I sewed for her. My aunt Karen did the quilting and she even quilted Maira's name on one of the blocks, if you look closely you can see that it says "Maira Rose". Now I just have to finish Connor and Hudson's quilts...there just aren't enough hours in the day, I tell you!

Christmas

So, our computer broke down after my last post and my iPod broke the same week so I was going through a bit of internet withdrawal for a while there but happily, we our now back online (with 3 new computers to replace the one that broke - long story). And so I can finally update my blog!

We had a really really nice Christmas at home and here are a few of my favourite pictures.

First, trimming the tree:

Hudson helping with the lights

The younger three each took turns putting the star on at the end:

I think Jess left the lens open on this shot to make the light streak like this:

And this one just because it was taken during the month of December and it's cute: it's Hudson playing in a couch fort that Jess built for him.

Now these pictures are from Shae and Connor's school Christmas concert. Connor's kindergarten class went up on stage first and sang a couple of cute songs:

Then after all the songs were done, the grade 6 classes performed a musical called "The Christmas Chronicles". Shae tried out for the role of the fashion/food reporter at the newspaper and she was thrilled to get the part. The play told the story of a newspaper called "The Bethlehem Chronicle" that is threatened with closure unless they get a big story and of course, one of the reporters moonlights as a shepherd to make extra money and he sees the angels and goes to Bethlehem so this big "scoop" saves the paper. It was a very Christ-oriented play which surprised me in our politically correct times. The whole play was great, the kids all did a great job (especially Shae, of course!). Here are a few pictures but when I have time, I'm going to put up the video of the play, Jess recorded the whole thing.

And finally, here are some pictures of the kiddos on Christmas Eve (telling the story of the nativity with some of our nativity scenes) and on Christmas morning.