Swim Awards Party

Our 4 swimmers had their annual awards party and had lots of great improvements and awards from this past year. We are very proud of them! Here are some of the pics from the slide show that I didn't already have...

Happy Easter!

We had a busy but fruitful Holy Week with Mariana acting in the Passion Play again, attending the Mass of the Lord's Supper and Veneration of the Cross, Tenebrae, squeezing in some school and swim practice, etc. We made our crowns of jewels and got everything ready on Saturday (and Allia even had a very successful bake sale with a friend to raise money for a summer trip). She managed to save some creativity and energy for the dining table, which she and Gloria prepared together...

 

 

They did a beautiful job. Mariana was missing from this because she opted to go to the Vigil Mass this year!

 The kids hunted eggs at church after morning mass.

Opening Easter baskets at home 

 

We had the blessing of hosting Lito and Lita as well as Fr. Albert for Easter lunch!

 We invited our sweet neighbor friends over to help with the Pinata (brought by Lito and Lita!) and Easter Egg hunt.

 

 

Lito was quite the Pinata wrangler. He had some sneaky moves for sure!

 The Champion egg hiders, Mariana and Abby. They cleverly hid some glittered eggs in the door wreath, and it looked so authentic that I almost didn't notice! It took the kids a really long time to find these!

 

 This pretty little princess slept through most of the festivities and was enamored with the confetti in everyone's hair after the cascarones. So someone generously shared with her. She was so proud!

 And Mariana's voice teacher generously added time to lessons so she and Allia could learn Panis Angelicus as a surprise Easter gift to Austin. So they sang the duet for us that evening.

 

He is Risen. Alleluia!

Officer nominations and other stuff

Both girls were nominated to be officers in their 4H club this year.

 

A little reading time with Daddy squeezed in among some very busy weeks of him being gone a lot!

Anastasia insisted I get a photo of this pretty sky so I agreed if I could have my pretty girl in it. ;)

Just Dance!

This game has become all the rave here. It is really quite fun, and I admit I even gave in and played once! Even Cecilia has joined in the fun!

Long Course Swim Meet

The older girls had their first long course swim meet for the season here at the A&M rec center, so they swam Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Austin officiated Friday and Saturday, so I took the younger ones Friday evening to watch since it was only one event. Then Gloria and I went to watch a couple of their Saturday events and we all went together to watch them Sunday.

 Cecilia was so excited when she spotted Daddy down by the pool officiating!

 

Austin volunteered to sing the National Anthem Saturday morning, and then Mariana was asked to sing on Sunday and agreed. It was her first time singing in front of a crowd, and we were so proud of her! (she got a little choked up toward the end but recovered nicely.)

Sebastian Birthday Party

I have previously just brought cupcakes to the park on Friday or something similar for our little guy's "party". But this year he is 5 and was actually asking when his party was and what we were doing. So we decided to invite his Godparents and family over for lunch, and thankfully that satisfied his idea of a party! (It helps that they have 6 kids 8 and under...and it turns out # 7 was born the following evening!). Allia decorated, Austin grilled and I cleaned up (after our crazy big event Saturday!) and made cupcakes. It was so nice for everyone. Sebastian was surrounded by good friends, and Austin and I got to catch up a little with our dear friends as well.

 

Austin gave strict instructions for him not to spit all over the cupcakes, and he was so careful to only blow air that it took 5 blows to blow out 5 candles. Sweet boy! We sure love our big 5 year old Sebastian!

Big Event!

We missed this last year, so I put a reminder on Google calendar this year so we could make sure to sign up. Big Event is the Saturday when the college students at A&M volunteer to help members of the community, usually with yard work. Austin had a whole list for them this year including pulling up a dead tree, planting a new one in it's spot, weeding and mulching the flower beds and garden and pulling up the carpet and tackboard from Mariana and Gloria's room so we can tile when they are at camp this summer. We got 10 students, and they were a wonderful group. They worked hard, were friendly and were great with the kids even letting Gloria, Anastasia, and Cecilia help them! (Cecilia held the weed bag open and said, "thank you" every time a contribution was made. It was adorable!).
They got the whole list done exactly in the time alotted for them to be here. We are so thankful...it would have taken us weeks to get all that done!