So far behind...

I am embarrassed by how long it has been since my last post! So much has happened during that time, and I won't be able to do most of it justice. However, I will try to give you at least a few glimpses into what has been happening around our household during that time.

Resurrection Day Celebrations
On Good Friday, we took a trip to Bristol for a visit with E's cousins. E helped me decorate a bunny cake to share with everyone, and the kids had a great time playing and hunting eggs. E also got to meet the chickens which were living in D and Z's backyard.

Coloring Eggs
Coloring eggs is one of my favorite Easter traditions, and I was hoping that Elijah would love it just as much as I do. And he does! He had a great time coloring eggs with Papaw on the Saturday before Easter. Here are a few pics of the fun.

Church Egg Hunt
What a difference a year makes! At last year's church egg hunt, E wasn't walking and the idea of placing eggs in the basket was a little much for him to grasp. This year he was running around with the big kids and collecting as many eggs as he could find! And then he couldn't wait to open the up to find what kind of surprises were hiding inside!

Empty Tomb Cookies
I am all about traditions and creating memories that will last a lifetime. This year we started a very meaningful new tradition: making empty tomb cookies on the Saturday night before Easter. These cookies tell the story of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. I hope that making these cookies will plant seeds in E's heart that will one day lead to him accepting Jesus Christ as his personal Savior.

Resurrection Day

The morning began by opening the sealed oven to discover that the empty tomb cookies were hollow inside, just like Jesus' tomb was empty on the first Easter morning. Then we got dressed for church and did our annual photo shoot. Each Easter we have taken a picture of E with his bunny. It is amazing to see how much he has grown! We also take a family photo each year. This year I think it only took about 50 shots to get one that turned out ok. Then we came home from church and enjoyed a delicious dinner, explored fun new treasures in Easter baskets, and did some more egg hunting a hiding. It was a great time!

I LOVE a good giveaway!

I bet many of you do, too! Run on over to Frugalissa Finds and enter for a chance to win a Petros reusable mug and 2 coupons for free Petro's! Their hint of orange tea is spectacular and so is their food, so hurry and enter now! The giveaway ends at noon today, so don't waste any time.

Go Tenn-ssee!

This weekend was the annual Orange & White game. We had been looking forward to this weekend for a long time and were very excited to take E back to Neyland Stadium for his second spring game. He loves football, and Mommy's love for UT has recently really started rubbing off on him! Just last week we were having an indoor picnic in the sunroom. I had spread a UT blanket out on the floor for us to sit on. In the middle of our meal, E stood up, walked over to the "Power T", and announced, "I sit on the Tenn-ssee!" Then he sat down right on top of the T.

We went down to campus on Friday to purchase tickets for the game. We didn't purchase our tickets ahead of time last year, and we waited in line for a very long time! I took E with me of course, and he was very disappointed when we realized the game wasn't right away. He actually cried when we got back in the car and headed home. I tried to explain to him that the game would be the next day. He talked about the game the rest of the day.

Game day rolled around, and his excitement continued. We got dressed in our Orange and headed to the stadium. He was so ready to cheer for "Tenn-see" and "The Big O-wange."

He wore an adorable hand painted shirt that I found at consignment for $2! And of course he wore his Tennessee hat that we bought for him last year at his first Orange and White game.

It was nice to see football action again, even if it was only a scrimmage. Oh how we have missed it!

Several minutes into the game, he discovered the jumbotron. He was quite enthralled and kept calling it the big TV. It's definitely big!

Papa S got some popcorn for him. I think he probably ate a whole box by himself.

He figured out that he could lay his head on Papa S's arm and shovel the kernels right in.

And he also discovered that he could use one hand to eat and the other hand to make sure the popcorn holder didn't go anywhere.

There were countless smiles.

And laughs.

And lots of cheering! Daddy bought him a new shaker. He had so much fun with it.

It was a really cold day, so we ended up leaving early. But we certainly had lots of fun while it lasted. I think E will definitely be looking forward to next year!

Yes, I Know the Muffin Man

The rainy weather outside forced us to spend our entire evening inside, but it didn't dampen our fun!Earlier today, E was watching one of his favorite DVDs of children's songs. One of the songs on the DVD is the muffin man song. He loves this song. Any time we see cupcakes or muffins or anything of that sort, he starts saying "the muffin man" over and over and over again. Today when we were watching it he turned to me and said, "Mommy, I want cuh-cake!" We didn't have any cupcakes, so I replied, "Honey, we don't have any cupcakes. Maybe we can make some later." And so we did.

After dinner, we cleaned up the kitchen, pulled out our aprons and made cupcakes. I had discovered earlier in the day that we were out of yellow cake mix, and we had purchased two huge containers of strawberries at Sam's earlier today, so I Googled for a recipe for strawberry cupcakes from scratch. Most of those recipes called for you to puree the strawberries then strain out the seeds. We didn't have time for that! So I went with a plain cupcake recipe and added small strawberry pieces.

We had so much fun making these cupcakes together, as you will see from the pictures below!

As soon as the muffin tins were brought out, E started yelling, "The muffin man!" As he put the liners in the cups, he continued saying it, so we asked him, who is the muffin man. He told us that HE is the muffin man!

They were delicious! The basic cupcake recipe can be found here.

The muffin man himself approved!

It was a wonderful night of family fun and tasty cupcakes!