How Spring weekends are meant to be spent...

One thing that I am ADORING about this Spring is the fact that Mark is no longer coaching track. This is the first Spring in 9 years that he's been home at a reasonable hour during the week and isn't gone half weekend. It has been so nice for him to be able to be at all of Ethan's soccer games and take Karis to some of her gymnastics practices. That has made the financial sacrifice worth it. I know that I am so blessed to have a husband who understands the value of being with and investing in his family as much as he possibly can...especially while the kids are little.

Anyway, we enjoyed what seemed to be the first nice weekend, weather-wise, in weeks. Karis had her gymnastics recital on Friday night. My parents came down to see it and Mark's parents came along, too. Here are a couple videos of her performance. We were thrilled that she actually got out there and did her stuff. Karis is a girl who wouldn't get on stage at her Pre-K graduation, and practiced for weeks for a Christmas program at church then decided at the dress rehearsal she wasn't getting up in front of the church. She fell off her bike a couple hours before the show and skinned her whole left side up. Injuries are the one time the girl will draw attention to herself. You would have thought her arm fell off and leg was broken the way she screamed! It wasn't till about 5 minutes before we had to leave the house that she decided she'd be able to perform. We loved watching her and cheering her on in "her thing". (I couldn't figure out how to flip the one horizontal...sorry!)

My mom, the "master gardener", helped me put together some flowers for a big tiered flower post my MIL got me for Christmas. We had a nice time browsing the garden market down the road with Natalie. The girls enjoyed watching Grammy work her magic and picking up some tips on how to split the roots.

The guys spent the day putting together our new playset. The big kids have far outgrown the one we've had since they were 2 and 3, so we decided to take the plunge and go for a wooden one. We spend so much time outside, we knew it would get a lot of use over the next several years. It was great having my dad's carpentry/contracting expertise and power tools to help with the job.