{"id":380,"date":"2007-04-11T17:17:06","date_gmt":"2007-04-11T22:17:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/?p=380"},"modified":"2007-04-11T17:17:06","modified_gmt":"2007-04-11T22:17:06","slug":"Birthday\/Easter Wrap-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/?p=380","title":{"rendered":"Birthday\/Easter Wrap-up"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Whew&#8230; what a week!&nbsp; We&#8217;ve had fun celebrating my birthday as well as spending a busy week with all the Easter festivities, and enjoying church to remember the true joy we celebrate all year long&#8230; Christ is risen!&nbsp; I love it when my birthday falls so close to Easter!&nbsp; Here&#8217;s the summaries&#8230;<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/photos\/family\/07-apr\/a-baking-bday.jpg\" \/><br \/><em>Analise baking my birthday cake, and the final product, below.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/photos\/family\/07-apr\/k-bday-cake.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>My birthday&#8230; this was a sweet, sweet birthday.&nbsp; I&#8217;m 31 (can you believe it? that sounds so old!).&nbsp; Brian got me a beautiful &quot;Trust in the Lord&quot; metal wall hanging, that I&#8217;ve been wanting for a long time.&nbsp; It&#8217;s hanging in our stairwell to the basement, which you can see through our front door (the door to the basement is glass).&nbsp; My mom gave me some $$ for a shopping spree, which was a real treat!&nbsp; Kat gave me Season 3 of Mad About You, which Brian and I have already been enjoying.&nbsp; Toones gave me a beautiful crystal cross to add to my collection.&nbsp; Dena gave me a gift certificate to a spa&#8230; she&#8217;s a mom &#8211; she KNOWS what a mom needs!&nbsp; Anna gave me a stylish pursh&#8230; nice to have something that doesn&#8217;t shout &quot;I&#8217;m a mom &#8211; I&#8217;ve got diapers, wipes, toys and snacks galore with me at all times!&quot;&nbsp; To top it all off, I was with my sisters on my birthday&#8230; a rare occurance!&nbsp; I&#8217;m so glad I got to see them!&nbsp; Seeing them makes me miss them even more, though&#8230;&nbsp; All in all it was a GREAT birthday!&nbsp; Thanks, everyone!<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/photos\/family\/07-apr\/kat-k-bday.jpg\" \/><br \/><em>Like Kat&#8217;s new haircut?&nbsp; Makes us look even more like sisters!<\/em><\/div>\n<p>Our family in Indiana always has a BIG Easter Egg Hunt, and it was fun to enjoy it with our kiddos.&nbsp; In spite of the 30degree weather and blowing snow, Analise and I hopped around picking up our loot.&nbsp; She was overwhelmed with all the candy options, but we&#8217;ve manged to dole it out pretty strictly.&nbsp; Between my cousins and I, there were 7 kids under 7, I believe.&nbsp; Add in the &quot;big kids&quot; and adults and there were 23 people there in all.&nbsp; We celebrated my birthday again with cheesecake.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/photos\/family\/07-apr\/a-egg\" \/><br \/><em>Analise hatching an egg at Toones before Easter.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/photos\/family\/07-apr\/easter-family.jpg\" \/><br \/>Not a bad family picture, as hard as it is to get us all looking at the camera!<\/p>\n<p><\/em><\/div>\n<p>We stayed in my Grandma&#8217;s old house, which is empty.&nbsp; It was as good as a hotel, and we were able to put Josiah in his own quiet room, have a bathroom to ourselves, and even pick up free wireless from somewhere.&nbsp; Easter morning, we went to Grandma&#8217;s church, and in the afternoon, after everyone else had gone home, we moved over to Grandma&#8217;s to spend some extra time with her and Charlie.&nbsp; We had a fun, family-filled weekend.&nbsp; It was a LOT of travel for such a short time, but it really was so great to be with my family.&nbsp; The only people missing were my mom and dad, spending an Easter weekend together in California, before he moves back to start a new job at the University of Minnesota in May.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>Other fun notes&#8230; we learned some good lessons from hearing Veggie Tales&#8217; Gideon and the Tuba Warrior 3 times back-to-back-to-back.&nbsp; Specifically, &quot;It&#8217;s a good thing God has patience, man, because I&#8217;m sure losing mine,&quot; and &quot;If you want to hear God say &#8216;well done!&#8217;, you have to do what He asks.&quot;&nbsp; Good stuff!<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/photos\/family\/07-apr\/j-piano.jpg\" \/><br \/><em>Josiah&#8217;s a budding Mozart!&nbsp; He loves to play&#8230; on his tip-toes with the very tips of his little fingers.<br \/>Above is our piano, and below is at my Aunt Connie&#8217;s this weekend.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/photos\/family\/07-apr\/j-piano-easter.jpg\" \/><br \/><\/em><\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<div><em>Analise and Mia enjoyed singing and playing together.&nbsp; Analise was singing excerpts from her <br \/>Veggie Tales Worship songs, and Mia kept asking, &quot;Where&#8217;d she learn that song?&nbsp; and that one?&quot;&nbsp; Very sweet.<\/em><\/div>\n<div align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/photos\/family\/07-apr\/girls-piano.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/photos\/family\/07-apr\/girls-piano2\" \/><\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Whew&#8230; what a week!&nbsp; We&#8217;ve had fun celebrating my birthday as well as spending a busy week with all the Easter festivities, and enjoying church to remember the true joy we celebrate all year long&#8230; Christ is risen!&nbsp; I love it when my birthday falls so close to Easter!&nbsp; Here&#8217;s the summaries&#8230; Analise baking my [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkzLf-68","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}