For Easter Sunday, we went over to Grandma and Grandpa Gazdik's house for an Easter/birthday celebration.  We celebrated Grandma's birthday, Todd's birthday, and Benjamin's birthday all together!  We had delicious food and enjoyed visiting Todd and his boys Bryen and Brady, too, since we don't get to see them very often.  As always, it's wonderful to be with Grandma and Grandpa, too!

Savannah brought three of her friends from her dorm, too, since they all needed something special to do on Easter!  It was fun to have all of them!

The next day started spring break for us!  Our big plans for the break was not a trip, though.  Our big plans were to paint the front room and the hallway!!  Yay!  It sounds like an easy project, right?  Like, probably we could be done on Monday, right?  Maybe Tuesday.  Awww, no, no, no, my dears.  The walls under the wallpaper were not smooth enough for paint.  And then there was all that trim!  Baseboards, crown molding, doors, windows . . . EEgads!!  Still we managed to accomplish a lot and there's no discounting all that family bonding time!

 

 

We did finish the hallway.  We added texture with tissue paper and it was plenty of work, but looks nice.  Here are some before and after pics!

Before . . .

 

Sarah warned him that she was going to take a picture of his first view of the finished hallway.

We've decided to wallpaper the front room and are waiting for the paper to arrive before we can finish things up.  In the mean time, the kids have decorated the walls for us.  Clearly, permission to write on the walls has been one of the highlights of their childhood.  Who needs wallpaper?  All I need are sharpies and crayons.

Thursday was Benjamin's birthday!  So we took some time off to have a pirate birthday party at the park.  Ben had six friends come and we made pirate ships and ate cupcakes and Cali and Cheyenne took them on a treasure hunt and played other pirate games with them!  It was super fun and Ben said, "It's my best birthday party ever!"  Which made us laugh since it is his first one ever! 

This is Beth modeling one of Ben's presents -- a disguise kit.  So clever!

Ben opened presents from his family later!

Kevin took Friday off and we actually did some fun stuff!  The day was gorgeous and we had an energetic family softball game!  I'm glad we made time for it.  It's one of our favorite things to do!