This was one of the best Easter Sunday’s that I have ever had. We wanted to help the kids feel of the beauty and power of the resurrection. To help us prepare, we followed along in the scriptures for the week before Easter. We started with Palm Sunday and followed the events of the last week in Christ’s life each day. It was fun to read the scriptures each night, watch the beautiful new videos about Christ’s life, sing Easter hymns and primary songs together (Oliver even taught us a new song or two that he learned at his Lutheran pre-school), and eat special Easter treats out of our Easter eggs. It was like having a little devotional with our family each night, and it really helped me focus on Christ. Kay made a beautiful Easter “creche” that the kids used to follow along in the stories that we told. On Friday, Oliver and Abby put Christ on the cross, then put him into the tomb. On Sunday morning, they found that the tomb was empty and the resurrected Christ appeared.

I love the message of hope and peace that Easter brings. I am so grateful that I could spend this week sharing my love of Jesus Christ with my wife and kids.

After a rainy and cold week, we weren’t sure that we would have good enough weather to do an Easter egg hunt. We were pleasantly surprised when Saturday turned out to be sunny and warm! We had a fun time coloring Easter eggs. Oliver loved using the tongs to put his egg in the cup and get it out again. He was so careful to be gentle. After we finished dying eggs, Oliver helped Abby hide in the house so that they wouldn’t see where Mom hid the eggs. Kay had green and blue eggs for Oliver to find, purple and pink eggs for Abby to find, and yellow and orange eggs that were free for all. The kids had a great time finding eggs.

I love General Conference. Conference brings me a flood of wonderful feelings. I am reminded of the love, comfort, and security that I felt watching Conference together with my family for so many years. I fondly think back to the many times that I sat in the Conference Center with my parents and siblings and felt the Spirit testify to me that Gordon B. Hinckley was a prophet of God. I met Kay at General Conference and I will be forever grateful that our relationship began with both of us seeking the Lord’s direction to us through our living prophet. Consequently, I look forward every six months to the opportunity to participate in General Conference.

Still, I confess that for the past several years Conference has not been quite the same for me. Wrestling two toddlers makes it difficult, at best, to engage with each speaker’s message. Between breaking up fights, dealing with tantrums, and becoming a human jungle gym, there isn’t much energy left to ponder and seek inspiration during Conference itself. Sometimes, I’ll admit, I wasn’t sure if I would ever be able to enjoy Conference in the same way again.

But things changed this year. For the first time, my kids actually paid attention during parts of Conference. I’m sure that they didn’t get anything specific out of the talks, but I believe that they did feel how important (to Mom and Dad, anyway) it is to pay attention to our prophets. On Sunday morning, I had printed out Conference coloring pages. This kept them busy for a while.

When they finished coloring, I started “Conference Bingo”. I printed off these bingo cards from The Friend‘s website.

I was amazed at how captivated the kids were. Oliver would listen intently to each talk and say things like, “Dad, I heard him say faith. I’m going to mark off faith,” or “He was talking about the priesthood. Do I have a square for the priesthood?” At one point Kay leaned over to make a comment to me about one of the talks and Oliver turned to her and said, “Shhhh! Mom, I’m trying to listen to the talks. You’re interrupting me!” Priceless, I say.

After each bingo, I let them have a couple of jelly beans. It kept them busy for the entire Sunday morning session. Not only that, but my kids were at least listening for the “buzz words” associated with the gospel. Conference was good this year.

We got a new car! Well, new to us, anyway. We have been looking for something a little bigger than our 1998 Ford Taurus for awhile, but we hadn’t really found anything in our price range. Then I noticed this 2002 Honda Odyssey posted on Craigslist for $4,500. I called and set up an appointment to go look at the car in Canton, MI. It was definitely a well-used vehicle, but it had been well taken care off. The sellers were the original owners and even had all of their maintenance receipts/records (including every oil change they had ever done). It has a lot of miles (130,000), but much of the maintenance that you expect to need around that mileage has already been taken care of (new water pump, timing belt, brakes, tires, tie rods). After Kay and I both took it for a test ride, we took the kids to IKEA so that we could have a few minutes to chat and pray over our decision. We both felt really good about the car; in fact, we felt like it was an answer to our prayers. It helped that the seller seemed like a person that we could really trust; he was really forthcoming about the condition and history of the vehicle and he even offered to let us talk to his mechanic. (I also noticed that he kept a large bible on his office desk, and we had a good conversation about camping in Utah.) We would have preferred to take the vehicle to an independent mechanic to get an outside opinion of the condition of the vehicle, but he had several more people scheduled to see the car that day and we were pretty sure it would be sold by the end of the weekend. We decided to go ahead and offer him $4,000. He accepted and we are the proud owners of a Honda Odyssey! As soon as we got home, the kids played all over the car.

Their verdict? “Much better than our red car!” I think I have to agree.

My friend Liz Hansen offered to take these photos for us last fall in exchange for a tiny bit of graphic design work. How lucky am I? She’s fantastic and so much fun! We were at Buhr park.

Abby recently turned 3 years old and we had a great party to celebrate. Kay made this beautiful birthday cake; Abby requested that her cake look like “Abby in her dress”. We had homemade pizza and IBC rootbeer for dinner.

Kay decorated our dinning room with handmade pompoms; it looked spectacular. When Abby walked in the room for dinner, she paused and in a hushed voice exclaimed, “Wow!”

Abby loved opening her presents. Oliver really wanted to get her something for her birthday, so he asked me if he could make her a present. He decided to make her a pair of “binoculars” made out of paper taped together. He made them all by himself and then I helped him wrap the present. It was fun to see him doing something so nice for his sister. We got her a Pigeon that had a matching game inside of it (the Pigeon comes from a series of children’s books illustrated by Mo Willems that Abby loves). Grandma Kotter sent her a barbie in a Volkswagen Beetle and Grandma James sent her a bumblebee pillow pet. Abby went to bed a happy girl.

This video shows Abby blowing out her birthday candles. We had a minor technical difficulty with the candles the first time through, so we had to try a second take.

These next two videos are a bit long and not too exciting, but I’m including them mainly for the benefit of Grandmas. This one shows Abby opening Grandma James’ present.

This one shows Abby opening Grandma Kotter’s present.

One of Oliver’s favorite songs: Praise to the Man

We love decorating our Christmas tree. Our cheap Walmart tree is beginning to show its age, but it still decorates up nicely. This year the top half of our pre-lit tree had stopped lighting up. I spent a long time trying to fix the strand of lights, but I finally gave up and just put a new strand on top of the broken lights.

Abby and Oliver were both super excited to help decorate, and between the two of them it didn’t take long to get all of our ornaments on the tree. Unlike previous years, they were really good to spread the ornaments out. I sort of miss having one branch with all of the ornaments on it!

The best part of decorating our tree is that the kids get to redecorate it each day. They love to move the ornaments around each morning and find a new spot for their favorites. Overall, I think our tree looks pretty good.

After decorating our tree, we turned off all of the lights and gathered together to sing a few Christmas carols. Oliver is a great singer and he sang out loud and clear, even when he was unsure of the words. Abby danced along beside him.

We had such a wonderful time at Thanksgiving with Kara, Alvin, and Nigel. Nigel was adorable. At first Abby and Oliver were a little shy around him, but they quickly warmed up and were sharing all of their toys with him. As soon as they realized that the first thing Nigel did was put toys in his mouth, they made sure to share their toys for a very brief moment!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner, mostly prepared by Kay, with spiral sliced honey ham, turkey breast with homemade cranberry sauce, asparagus with hollandaise sauce, sweet potato swirls, potatoes and gravy, rainbow jello, lettuce salad, and whole wheat rolls. Best of all, Kay made both apple pie and pumpkin pie! She is such an amazing cook, and a great hostess. Perhaps the biggest challenge of the day was getting Abby to come sit up at the table for dinner. We had brought our old high chair up for Nigel to use, but Abby decided that she had to sit in it herself. We tried to reason with her, but we finally decided to was better to let her eat Thanksgiving dinner in the high chair than to have the meal end up with everyone in tears.

After dinner we played “Toy Story” bingo and then I gave a short Thanksgiving lesson. I made pirate hats for all of the kids and we went on a treasure hunt looking for our blessings. Oliver loved following the treasure map that I made and he said that it was the best part of the day.

Kara and Alvin had to leave on Friday, so we only saw them for a couple of days, but it was great to have them here. We hope they come back soon!

We are so grateful for our family! Kara, Alvin, and Nigel came from New York to visit us today. We love having them here.

Baby Nigel is adorable!

Thank you Grandma Kotter for sending the fun Thanksgiving present. Oliver and Abby love the new Christmas shirts that you gave them.