The big 3-6

 I turned 36 this year. Kind of a ho-hum number. But my birthday was anything but ho-hum this year.

My birthday was on a Friday so I had the day off. I had lunch with Meredith, Leigh and Jill at Olive Garden (why didn't we take a picture?!?)

Then I took a nice nap since Joe volunteered to pick the kids up from school!

Then I opened presents when the kids and Joe got home--a new bike for me! 

Then we ate Mexican and headed back to our house for a fun game night with the Adairs, Dunns and Adams. Such a fun day. Sadly no pictures of that day...

But THEN...I also got to have an actual birthday party. Meredith and Tricia planned a super fun birthday party for me at Junque2Jewels which is a local store that you can go and create things for your house. Most of us had never been, and I've been wanting to try it for a while now.

I was so excited that so many of my girls were able to come! 

I love this girl. I love that I get to do life daily with her and that our kids get to grow up together. There's no better best friend than her!

We had so much fun creating and snacking and talking.

The finished products. It was amazing how good everything turned out. I can't wait to find the perfect place to put mine in our house!

What a fun birthday!

Daddy/daughter dance

 On Saturday Joe took the girls to their first daddy/daughter dance at our friend's church. The girls were SO excited to get dressed up and go dancing.

We spent time doing their hair and a little makeup. They loved it.

How adorable are they?!

And their date is pretty good looking too. :)

mushroom hunting

 So a random thing we have learned about Arkansas is that there are a few weeks a year that edible wild mushrooms grow. Apparently they are quite the high commodity if you can find them. Well there are some wild mushrooms (called morel mushrooms I think..) that grow in the valley behind Dave and Meredith's house. Joey, Audrey and Kylah went hunting for them one afternoon and came back with a few. They look quite funny, but we were up for trying them! Meredith was gone, so she told me how to make them. It wasn't until after we ate them that she said "they were hollow, right??" (Apparently that's how you can tell if they are edible or poisonous.) I gave her a hard time for waiting until after we ate them to be sure! :)  (don't worry...they were hollow...) :)

Audrey and Kylah prepped the mushrooms and we cooked them in oil.

The finished product. Not much to look at. And honestly I didn't think they tasted that good, but they weren't bad. 

And this is sometimes my view when I walk outside. I love it. Basketball and random neighbor kids playing (by random I usually mean the Adair kids.) ;) 

Easter

 My mom came for Easter weekend. The weather was perfect on Saturday for some outdoor adventures.
We went to the park for a picnic lunch and the kids played for a long time (the perks of Gramma pushing the swings!)

We stopped at Walmart, and of course the kids loved the Easter aisles.

Gramma and the kids dyed Easter eggs. I can confidently say I was very happy to let Gramma run this one. :)

They made emoji eggs, so these are their emoji faces.

We celebrated my mom's birthday too.

It rained overnight so on Easter morning everything all of a sudden looked to green and beautiful outside. We headed to church for a great service.

After we got home from church we let our kids do an Easter egg hunt. I was very thankful to have my mom there to help me fill all those eggs! The kids loved it!

We had three other families over for Easter dinner. It was an impromptu but fun dinner. We definitely should have gotten a picture of everyone together!

Here are all of the kids playing baseball outside after dinner.

My mom had to go home that afternoon, and we were sad to see her go. But we had such a fun weekend with her even though it went quickly!

spring pictures

I don't buy spring pictures, but I did take a picture of the pictures so I could remember how cute these three looked! :)