A Photo Challenge

Ok. It's time to come clean. I went through an ugly stage while growing up. No, you don't understand. I'm talking an UGLY stage. And I'm ready to face it. So, to get through The Reveal, I'm throwin' out a challenge. If you want to, you can also post pictures of yourself growing up. If we do this thing together, I might make it through. I thought we could start with the 3-4 year old stage. I was still cute at this age. SEE?? Still cute. The worst is yet to come.

So, on May 8th, post a picture of yourself at age 3-4. Oh, and start gathering pictures of yourself when you were around 10 years old, 14 years old, and 17 years old. Kind of an age progression thing that we'll plan for in the future. We'll get through this together. If you don't run screaming from the room first.

A Lil Missionary Easter

Happy Easter from the Lil Missionary. He hopes you had heaps of fun!

A Stratford Party Wrap-Up

With the whole egg hunt and pinata thing going on, I've missed showing you a few other things that happened at our party on Sunday. Edna was very crafty this year with her cookie flowers and tie-dyed Easter eggs.

Our Easter table overfloweth, with bacon-wrapped asparagus, a bunny cake and Bruce carving the ham:

Nancy wore bunny ears:

 And there were bubbles!

Lindsey and Shannon cooperated so well with the whole picture taking thing. then later, Lindsey tried to take Shannon down with her sweet WWF moves.

My girls are so delicate and well mannered...such angels. I love 'em! I hope you had a happy Easter, but I don't know how it could have possibly been as fun as mine!

What Do You Get When You Combine Karate With An Easter Egg Pinata?

You get this:

I found an Easter egg pinata last week during my wonderful on-going storage room clean out. "Perfect!" I thought. "I'll fill it and take it to the Stratford party!" 15 lbs. of candy later, it was ready to roll!

Andrew thought he might be able to just take the whole thing with him during the egg hunt, but he was wrong, So, so wrong.

We started with the littlest cousins and worked our way up by age.

 

Sometimes (quite often.) we were running for cover when the stick swinging got a little wild!

Little Mason thought it might be fun to just throw the stick like a javelin!

 Somewhere along the way, the pinata hanger broke, so Bruce resorted to holding it while the older cousins tried to give it a good kick!

 

 The best part was watching everyone's faces while the craziness was unfolding:

 

Finally, Camille gave it a pre-missionary kick, which resulted in her foot being embedded in the pinata. It broke in half and mayhem erupted! There was screaming.

So, let this be a lesson to you all- clean out your storage rooms and you might find some fun party supplies!!

Yet Another Egg Hunt

We couldn't get enough of the traditional Easter egg hunt this year! On Easter Sunday, we had a hunt in Grandma's yard after dinner. Grandma made sure we all understood the rules:

Then I fought my way through the throngs of little people at the door so that I could get some good shots of the hunting. (Picture me physically shoving kids back in the door as I made my way out, "No! It's not your turn yet!")

The the hunting began and we had a good time finding all of the treats that Grandma's minions had hidden in the yard.

The college kids were just as excited for treats as the younger cousins were. I don't think there is much room in a college budget for treats.

 

 

Tomorrow: The Epic Egg Pinata. You won't want to miss it. Trust me.