B&M WHITING CLAN

Easter

We had a great Easter this year! It began 12 days before Easter with the opening of a single egg. We received an Easter countdown gift from my sister Michelle. For the past few years she has expressed her gratitude for having a Christ centered Easter countdown that she enjoys each year and this year she shared that gift with our family! We were all so excited. Did you know that 12 is evenly divided by 3, which means that every child had the same number of opportunities to open a Easter egg. It was fun to read scriptures about Christ and talk about what happened to Christ leading up to Easter morning.

Then a week before Easter we were invited over to my first cousin once removed (for ease sake I call him Uncle) Keith's house for a hunt with their kids and other cousins. I felt super loved that they thought to include us in this tradition that they have. Tucker successfully found all of his permitted number of eggs before I made it up the stairs and got my shoes and Brylee's shoes on. He was FAST! Hunter was then coming in from outside as I headed out with Brylee and would not pause long enough for a picture. He had eggs to open! :)

Brylee figured out what to look for and that she didn't have to open them right after finding them. It is interesting how when kids are small they want to open their eggs as soon as they are found and when they get older the understand that they should find as many eggs as possible before they stop to open them :)

Gunnar just had lots of fun with everyone's empty eggs. He loved that he could crawl around and get whatever he wanted and no one tried to stop him :P

The following week we had our ward Easter egg hunt with a breakfast, the children thought it was fun to wear their baskets on their heads like hats.

This time I succeeded in getting a picture of the boys "hunting" for the eggs.

After the ward party we went to a community hunt. As my experience with community hunts has been, they are not worth all the wait and heat. Tucker and Hunter did enjoy getting their faces painted. Hunter refused a picture but Tucker's spiderman face matches his shirt so well. He was super excited, and did not want to wash it off in the tub for Sunday.

For Easter, the children got new clothes :) We bought the boys' suits at JCPenny while they were on sale. Tucker didn't really want the white shirt, he wanted one that was colored like Hunter's but Bryant convinced him otherwise. We were pleasantly surprised when Tucker's suit rang up for $3, apparently it was on a super sale :)

And these pictures of Hunter show his wonderful personality. He loves to pose like this for almost all pictures these days, I'm just glad he didn't feel the need to cover his face with his hands. I sure love his craziness!

Children's Museum at Gateway!

The Children's Museum in Salt Lake had a free day so you know we were there! We went with some friends and all took the "train" to Salt Lake. It was so cool to ride without seat belts and be on a train and see all that there was to see.

The Children's museum is super awesome with lots of things child size. They have a "bee hive" where the kids get to be the worker bees and put the pollen (plastic balls) through various chambers. The kids had so much fun! It was hard to convince them to come see all the other cool stuff:

Gunnar really liked the xylophone. He actually hit the right spot a few times until one of his siblings came along and took over.

The next area was a "construction site" It had a bunch of square and rectangular foam blocks for the kids to move from the bottom to the top by the stairs or with the help of one of the two cranes. Using the cranes required the kids to work with each other because one person operated the crane, one loaded the blocks onto it, and another one unloaded it when it reached the top. Once the blocks were at the top they were sent down a slide to the bottom.

Hunter had so much fun it was hard to convince him to ever leave. He spent the majority of the time at the museum in this single section.

Tucker found a cozy place inside of the many houses to read a book. The houses had everything in them you could imagine in a house. There were kitchens, window flower boxes, telephones, kid size chairs, baby things, and more!

There was also a gas station with this wonderful car parked waiting to be filled up outside the grocery store wher eyou got to pick things off the shelves and purchase them at the register. The kids got to be shelf stockers, checkers, shoppers, and anything else in the store.

There was also an elaborate water "table." It had lots of cool things in the water for the children to play with. Brylee was a little intimidated by all of the other children at first and it took her awhile to get wet but she loved watching things flow through the tubes.

Tucker thought the water pump was pretty cool

Hunter and Tucker both attempted the rock wall. Hunter was really good at climbing up and then along the wall. Apparently, after seeing him safely to the ground and telling him to head over the the stable with Bryant while I gathered another child from the water table, Hunter decided to climb back on the wall and got a little "stuck."

There was also a "small child" area where young ones like Gunnar were meant to play safely, but on free day there are way too many kids for anyone Gunnar's size to be safe. Tucker found a good way to go down the slide and enjoyed climbing into the birds nests.

At the farm there were crops to pick and plant, hay bales to stack and move and a gigantic horse (close to normal size in actuality). Everyone loved riding the horse, including Gunnar!

Upstairs and outside there is a real helicopter for the children to play in. Brylee is was really concerned that the helicopter was going to take-off because it makes realistic noises of take-off.

Upstairs had a lot more building type activities. Things for the children to use minds to create things and learn about wind tunnels, and hurricanes, and such.

Tucker really enjoyed these cnex type things. He built himself a house. He is always building "houses" out of anything he can find.

On the way home we rode the train on the top floor. The kids were super excited and had a great time!

I am so grateful that my children can be so wonderful when we go places like the children's museum. They were great listeners, had happy attitudes about everything, and didn't complain when it was time to leave and head home. I don't know where they learned it from, because home life certainly isn't likely that regularly, but they usually do great when we are out! It makes it fun to take them out and enjoy things like the museum when it is super crowded and crazy. I love my children!