Easter

We had the best Easter this year.  It was just wonderful in so many ways.  To start off with, Brian's brother Brandon was driving through town on his way back to Baltimore so he was able to celebrate Easter with us.  The kids just love their uncle Brandon, so they were so excited to see him.  

Earlier in the morning the kids had woken up to find gifts left by the Easter bunny.  They ate a few pieces of their candy and found the eggs that the bunny had hidden before getting dressed for Sunday School.  The church service was very good and well-attended.  It was nice to see so many people coming together to celebrate.  

After church we went to have lunch at Granny and Papa's, and while everyone wasn't there we still had a large crowd.  We ate a delicious meal and then celebrated the March / April birthdays.  We weren't able to hide eggs last year due to the weather, but it was nice and sunny this year so the egg hunt was able to take place.  It was such good weather that even Papa got in his scooter and rode around during the egg hunt.  I was definitely tired by the end of the day, but it was a good kind of tired.  It was just a great day all-around.

Easter Prep

Easter is always full of lots of fun, praise, and church activities.  Because of the way that our spring break fell this year, the kids were not able to participate in the spring production by the children's choir.  The kids did sing a few songs in church on Palm Sunday, so they were able to do a little with the music that they had been rehearsing.  

The church Easter egg hunt is always a much-anticipated event.  It's funny how it takes so long to hide the eggs and then the kids find them all within five minutes. The kids are blessed to have such a good group of church buddies.  They all get along so well together.  

After having performed their songs in church and participated in the egg hunt, the last bit of "prep" work was getting the eggs ready.  Brian is usually the orchestrator of this, and I'm glad that he took this role again this year.

Philadelphia

Olivia is studying the founding of our country in school this year, so we thought that this would be a great time to visit Philadelphia.  Philly is only about two hours or so from the Sanders' house in Delaware, so it was an easy drive. Once we arrived, we went straight away to get tickets for Independence Hall.  Even though we procured the tickets in the 10 o'clock hour, the first available tour wasn't until 3:45.  I'm glad we went ahead and got those tickets right off.  We saw several people wanting to tour and being turned away later in the day because the park service had run out of tickets.

After getting our tour tickets, we walked across the street to the Liberty Bell Center to see the bell. That didn't take long.

 It was getting close to noon and we had some time to kill so we decided to walk around Philly.  The plan was to walk to Reading Terminal Market because I had heard that that was the place to get a Philly cheesesteak, and I wanted Brian to have that (because he is such a foodie).  My guidebooks didn't lie, Reading Terminal Market is indeed the place to be for lunch, and I think that everyone in Philadelphia was there. I'm okay with crowds, but this was too much.  There was a long line at every stand.  We could barely move around. We quickly began looking for a plan B, but lots of other people were too.  Many of the restaurants around the market were also full.  We ended up just walking back to the historic district and having lunch at a pub in that neighborhood.  Although our trek failed, we did get to see some interesting things along the way.  We walked through a part of Chinatown, saw the surprisingly beautiful City Hall, and went into the fanciest department store (a Macy's) that I've ever seen.

 After lunch we still had a little time to kill until our tour.  So, we walked around the historic neighborhood checking out some of the other buildings and catching Pokemon.  Yes, the kids want to hunt for Pokemon everywhere we go.  They are really into it.

Three forty five finally rolled around and we were able to enter Independence Hall.  We got to see several rooms in the building- including the room where the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were debated and signed.  Olivia had to memorize the Preamble to the Constitution for her class this year, and we videoed her reciting it in three different places within the building where it was written.  The park ranger heard her reciting it and he gave her a card that had the Preamble written on it.

 After our tour we returned to our car and drove back to Delaware.  Later in the evening the movie National Treasure was on t.v. and we watched it.  There was a long sequence in the movie when the heroes are in Philadelphia.  It was cool to see the places that we had just been to that day in the movie.

Cherry Blossom Festival

While in Delaware we made a day trip to D.C. so that we could see the cherry blossoms.  I have always wanted to see this, and we really lucked out with our timing. According to the "cherry blossom watch" website,  the trees are only in "peak" for a few days and start looking pretty shabby after about a week.  The window in which one can see them in their full glory is narrow.  The "peak" was predicted to be about a week and a half before our trip, but a last minute cold snap turned things in our favor.  The "peak" was on Saturday and we visited on Wednesday, so the trees were still beautiful.  We could not have picked a better day to visit.  It was sunny and cool.  We parked near the Air and Space Museum and then walked toward the tidal basin.  The Cherry Blossom Festival was taking place so there was a band playing near the basin.  It was beautiful.  Even the kids- who had been complaining all morning that their mom was "making them go see flowers" and that "this was going to be lame"- were in awe of how beautiful it was.

We ended up walking all the way around the tidal basin.  We even stopped to rent some paddleboats and peddled around the basin for about twenty minutes.  While we were on the lake four helicopters flew over us followed by Marine One.  That was pretty cool.

Other than popping in the food court at the Air and Space Museum, we didn't do any of the museums on this visit.  Instead we did tons of walking and visited lots of memorials- some of which we had never been to before.  Some of these "new" memorials were those honoring Jefferson, FDR, and MLK.  We also walked all of the way to the White House.  We have seen it from a distance every time that we've been in D.C., but the kids wanted to get a closer view so we trudged all the way down to Pennsylvania Avenue.  With all of the walking we did, we were beat by the end of the day.  This was the most beautiful that I'd ever seen the mall, so I'm glad that we visited.

Stevie Nicks

While we were in Delaware, Barb and I made a trip to Balitmore to see Stevie Nicks in concert.  It was such a good show.  Stevie sang many of our favorite songs including "Stand Back", "Edge of 17", "Gyspy", and "Landslide".  She also sang some songs that we were not so familiar with.  She paused between most songs to tell of story of how each song came to be.  It was interesting.  One thing is for sure:  Stevie can sing!  She hasn't lost anything with age.  She sounded great, and we had a great time.