A Weekend of Celebrations!

We had a lot of things to celebrate this past weekend, first and foremost being our favorite holiday, Easter! It is our favorite because of the amazing love our Lord showed us by dying on the cross for us, bearing all of our sins & then rising on the third day that we might be raised up with Him! Thank you Jesus for loving us THAT much!

"But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation." Romans 5:8-11

I hope each of you had a blessed Easter!

Another reason for our joy this Easter...my brother, the kids beloved "Uncle Pete" came home for a quick visit from Chicago! He got to meet Drew for the first time & the bigger kids wore Uncle Pete out with their many demands for playing games & just hangin' out!

We also were celebrating this sweet girls' 2nd birthday! Our "baby" girl turned 2 this weekend! We celebrated with a nice family party on Friday night.

Here is the birthday girl, enjoying a chocolate covered strawberry!

I have to tell you the amazing story behind this adorable Bunny Cake. Our Sunday School class has blessed us tremendously by providing meals for us for several weeks since Drew was born. This is an incredible ministry that I love to participate in when couples have new babies, and it is so wonderful to be on the receiving end. Not having to think "What's for Dinner?" and automatically having a nice meal when you are operating on SO little sleep, well that is just tremendous! Even more so, on Friday due to several circumstances that arose during the day, we were running dreadfully behind on our party prep! I needed to get to the store to get ingredients for a birthday cake, but Jeff didn't get home from work until 4:00 pm...and people were coming over at 7:00! Long story short, I was stressed! About this time our dear friend Erica called to see if it would be a good time to bring her meal by & I of course said yes. She showed up on our door-step about 15 minutes later with a delicious home cooked meal and guess what else???

THIS ADORABLE BUNNY CAKE!

Our Bunny Cake came complete with little baggies of pink coconut for the ears, pretzel sticks for whiskers, M&Ms for the bow-tie & green coconut for "grass to lay in"! I almost cried right then! Erica did not even know that it was Darcy's birthday, she simply thought the cake would be a fun thing for our kids to decorate for Easter (did she also somehow know that though I bought 2 dozen eggs, we did not have time to dye any this year!!!) Talk about blessing the socks off of someone! I thanked Erica profusely & also thanked the Lord right then for providing such a fun cake for the kids! (And yummy, too!)

Here are the kids & there cousins decorating it at the party!

Sophie slipped & fell into the cake, so she got to enjoy the icing a bit early!

And here he is, the fully decorated Bunny!Darcy blowing out her 2 candles!Cousins are great!Darcy digs right in! Opening presents...
Where's Darcy? She got a little pack-n-play crib from her grandparents! And an American Girl Bitty Twin doll from her other grandparents!The little Mommy-in-training!

(We are just waiting to see how long it takes before she tries to put Drew in her pack-n-play!)

Since Friday was rainy & stormy, we planned an outing for Darcy's birthday on Saturday.

We took the kids to Carowinds for the first time!

(We weren't the only ones who had the idea to go on Saturday...the park was packed!)
Getting ready for a fun day!

Ready for fun & adventure!

This was the first ride & unfortunately for Darcy it got things started off on the wrong foot! This ride went REALLY fast & made her kind of sick & dizzy, she clung to Jeff the entire ride! (I didn't get to watch as I had gone to nurse Drew.) So she would hardly ride anything else the rest of the day! Hopefully she will warm up to it a bit more next time!

Always Daddy's Girl!Sophie & Jack met Dora, Boots & Diego!
Waiting in line (we did a lot of that, but the kids were great!)By the end of the day, Darcy was pooped & napped in her stroller! It's hard work being 2!
Well, since I have been trying to get this posted for 3 days, I'll wrap things up now!

We did more celebrating on Sunday for Easter...and I want to share some photos of our new (OLD) house, but those will have to wait for next time!

Off to bed for me for an hour or so until Drew wakes up to eat again!