Easter

The week before Easter McKell had some fun activities at school. Because it's a private, church-run preschool they can teach about the real meaning of Easter, which I love. I came to pick her up one day and they were all standing together with big paper palm leaves acting out the story of Jesus's triumphal entry into Jerusalem. 

The school is next to a retirement home, so the kids got to walk over there to present a little Easter program for the residents, followed by an Easter egg hunt. 

And a few days later they had classroom Easter parties and another egg hunt outside the school.

McKell really liked the two Darth Vader eggs she found.

At home we did an Easter devotinal Friday night, which included making the Resurrection Rolls we discovered last year. Then Easter baskets were enjoyed and eggs hunted for on Saturday morning. And Sunday, of course, was Church. (By the way, it's getting REALLY hard to find dresses for Kaylee that have sleeves AND are longer than her mid-thigh.)  

Beach Day

On our family bucket list for the year we included a trip down to the beach. We've lived here in Texas for 5 years now. We thought it was about time.

So, Good Friday was the day! With the kids off school and Russ off work, it was a perfect choice.

Even though the drive is supposed to be 3+ hours we decided to just do a day trip, rather than staying the night somewhere down by the beach. The actual drive time was more like 4 hours because we had to go through downtown Houston, and of course there was traffic. Even in the middle of the day on a holiday. Blah. Next time, we'll probably turn the trip into an overnight one. (Plus, it would be REALLY nice to have a place to wash off all the sand from our bodies before driving several hours in the car to get back home.)

Luckily, our girls are pretty awesome road trippers, so the long travel hours weren't really a problem. The weather was lovely, the waves were fun, and we had a great family day together.

One of the highlights of the day was taking the ferry over from Galveston to the Bolivar Peninsula (some of our friends recommended a particular beach on the Peninsula). McKell was a little disappointed to learn she'd be seeing a FERRY, rather that a FAIRY, but she loved being on the boat.

Apparently I really like to take pictures of, and tell stories about McKell, because here she is again. We really had to work to coax her into the water because she was having so much fun gathering seashells in the sand. 

Waves are fun. The beach had some pretty awesome ones. Big ones, too. So big, in fact, that both Kaylee and I had our sunglasses knocked off by waves.

I promise Ashlyn was there too, I just missed her in all the water pictures somehow.

We like Texas. My sister lives in Canada. On the same day we were enjoying the beach she was taking pictures of the snow in her yard. :)

Spring Break and Burnetts

We were lucky enough to have Nana and Papa visit us for Spring Break back in March. So fun to spend our days off with them!

Nana got to visit McKell's preschool for Western Day.

Always up for a project, Nana and Kaylee re-painted an old desk together.

A little Sunday afternoon algebra fun.

We got to help Papa celebrate his birthday!

And he got to help McKell build one of her duplo block creations.

Pi Day! We had chicken pot pie for dinner, and two kinds of pie for dessert. Lucky!

Russ has happy childhood memories of riding roller coasters with his Dad. In an effort to re-live that experience everyone (except me) headed off to Six Flags for a day.

Unfortunately, half of Texas had the same idea, so the traffic and lines were insane, and they didn't end up going in the park, even after driving all the way to San Antonio (3 hours from Bryan).

They spent some time at the mall. Mannequin challenge anyone? 

And then found a cool park to play at for a few hours.

Apparently McKell found the love of her life, too.