Easter Eve

We've had such a busy weekend so far. Last night Andrew and I went to the Marriott School closing banquet—he had to go because he was nominated for the Bateman award—and we didn't get home until nearly eleven o'clock (after a quick stop on the way home to get some Easter things...because we didn't put that off at all). We were a little tired, then, when the girls ran into our room early in the morning, wondering if the Easter bunny had been here. We didn't tell them when the Easter bunny was coming but I guess Grandma, who had put them to bed for us last night, suggested that he might come on Saturday instead of Sunday because he knows that we're so busy with church on Sunday.

I just realized I used the word "we" up there. What I meant to say is that I was a little tired when the girls ran into our room—Andrew somehow slept through both of them climbing into bed and talking loudly about the Easter bunny and Star Wars (which they had watched last night before bed).

They ran out to the living room to check for baskets as soon as they heard noise in the kitchen (the noise was Grandma getting things ready to head to Manti for a ward temple trip of sorts).

They were thrilled and a little dazed. Miriam kept saying, "Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!" It's her way of expressing disbelief. "Bubbles? Whoa! Candy? Whoa! Barrettes? Whoa!"

We found little bubble blowing kits at Wal-Mart for 97 cents and debated for a few minutes about whether we should get two princess sets or branch out a bit and get a fairy set for Rachel, who has a thing for fairies, even though the fairy set was green and not pink. We decided to take the risky route and it paid off well—both girls were thrilled about their bubble sets and no one displayed any jealousy. Phew.

After we'd looked through our baskets (a lot of which was courtesy of Grandma) and had breakfast and gotten dressed we headed off to BYU for our very last clothing exchange. The Gift of the Heart Exchange has been such a blessing in our lives—it's how our children stay in clothes. They love to help pick out t-shirts and pyjamas and things. Today we focused a bit on baby Benjamin—our first time "shopping" in the boy's section. I even managed to elbow my way into the maternity section and found a comfortable pair of pants (that have a rip in them that I need to fix). It might be a huge blessing but it's also a bit of a vulture-fest so sometimes elbowing your way in (politely, of course) is necessary.

On the way home Andrew and I wondered if there was anything like that set up in the Durham area and, if there is isn't, if I'd be able to coordinate something like it. I frankly don't know. It's a huge undertaking but I think it's something I'd be willing to try (if no such thing already exists).

Our last stop at the exchange was the toy room, where we let the girls pick out one toy each—as an Easter surprise—then we rushed home to eat lunch before heading back to BYU with my mom. She had a dress rehearsal for the percussion concert this evening while the girls and I went to the BYU ballroom dance concert, which was amazing. There's this family in my parents' ward that are majorly into ballroom dancing and their daughter got some awesome tickets for us—we were on row nine! I don't think I've ever sat so close to the floor of the Marriott Center in my life!

We got to sit by a woman in my mom's ward who everyone has always said was my "twin." Come to find out, we're related through two different lines so the fact that we have a familial resemblance is somewhat explained. She had a baby last year and when I would go out walking in my parents' ward people would remark on how good I looked already. I was ready to run a marathon this time last year! I should look in shape for that, right? And now that I'm pregnant I've had a few people say, "What?! You're pregnant again?!" and I say, "Oh, I'm not Noelle! I'm Nancy!" 

Yes. We look that similar. People who have known us for a decade can't tell us apart.

Anyway...

Rachel and Miriam were mesmerized by the dancers, usually when the girls would come out in their pretty "princess" dresses. They'd pick out dancers and announce, "That's me! The one with the blonde hair—that's who I'm going to be. Who are you going to be?" 

One number was High On a Mountain Top and they had a picture of a sun setting over a mountain range on the screen in the back. The men were dressed all in black and the women were dressed in billowy dresses of pink and blue. Rachel asked what they were being and I told her that I thought the girls certainly matched the colours of the sunset so perhaps they were pretending to be the sky.

"Then the guys must be the mountains," Rachel observed. "And they're lifting the sky."

It was a rather poetic piece and I was impressed that Rachel picked up on it. 

The girls rather enjoyed the silly pieces—they did I wanna be like you from "The Jungle Book" and had a gorilla out dancing on stage with the girls, which was hilarious, of course.

In between every dance, when they'd cut the lights and the dancers would run on/off stage Rachel would remark, "Wow—they're not afraid of the dark! That's amazing!" or "They're not afraid of the dark, either! How do they keep moving when it's so dark? Will I ever be able to do that? I can't get out of my bed when it's dark I don't think I could run across a stage!"

The girls were always very happy when the lights would come back on. One piece, however, was danced completely in the dark—well, they had black lights up and the costumes were all designed to glow. It was pretty neat—it was called MacTendo, I think, and they spoofed a bunch of old computer and nintendo games like Pong, PacMan, Mario, Donkey Kong, and so forth. They even had the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I thought it was pretty hilarious and the girls enjoyed it even though they'd only ever seen Mario out of all the games they featured. Near the end of the piece they killed the lights completely and had a few dancers with LED light costumes dance around the stage.

It was fun to sit so close so that we could actually see the faces of the dancers and pick out where Carli and Kyle were (they're the ones we knew). 

The whole theme of the show was Stripes and Starz so a lot of the pieces were patriotically themed, but it wasn't too overbearing. Or maybe I'm just getting more used to living here. They did a number of tributes to the soldiers and one of the songs almost had me crying—it was about sung "by" an army wife, wondering where her husband is and if he's alright and that she wishes he could come home because she's tired of being alone and their house just isn't a home without him. Darn hormones. 

After the show I ran into my high school ballroom coach, Alison. It was fun to see her!

We met up with my mom, who had just gotten out of her dress rehearsal, and went home to dye eggs. 

The girls were dying to dye eggs. They were lucky this year because Grandma and Grandpa are planning a big dinner for their BYU kids tomorrow so we had a lot of eggs to dye—five dozen!

Miriam's primary motive was to have one egg in every cup of dye at any given moment. 

I think she dyed more eggs than anybody. Everyone else was trying to be at least a little artistic—here Rachel is showing off an egg she dyed half pink and half blue:

We have a lot of candidates for this year's Easter Egg Smackdown. We'll have to either do the Smackdown before dinner tomorrow or reserve a few eggs for later.

After Miriam had tired of dying eggs she ran off to find her bubble-blowing set and asked to be let outside. She's certainly gotten good at blowing bubbles!

This picture is just about my ultimate favourite of the day:

Rachel soon joined Miriam and things got dicey pretty fast—the girls were knocking over each other's dishes of solution and blowing bubbles right into each other's faces and just squabbling in general. 

Yesterday they were squabbling so badly that I lost it and spoke a little harshly (I think I said, "Miriam! Stop coveting everything your sister touches! Rachel! Stop hoarding everything! You can only use one crayon at a time, anyway, and there are ten million of them so STOP FIGHTING OVER THEM!). 

And then they went off to play together quietly because they were both like, "Sheesh, why's Mom being so mean?" Sometimes I think all they need to get along is a common enemy and if I have to be the enemy sometimes then so be it.

Today's common enemy was soap-in-the-eyes.

What did I tell you? Soap in the eyes:

This was Rachel getting Miriam back for blowing bubbles in her face. *Sigh*

We had a quick dinner and then I got ready to go to my mom's percussion night with Uncle Patrick while the girls got ready to have another Star Wars night, this time with Daddy. The concert was good, though loud. But it was an evening of percussion so that's to be expected. The first piece, however, was written as a lullaby—it had a military beat and used tom-toms and snare drums and bass drums and was "rat-a-tat-tat" and "boomity-boom" the whole time. I was like, "Lullaby?"

The Gamelan group had greatly improved since I last heard them play (on Leap Day). My friend Anggita and her friend Angelia danced the Tari Pendet, which was fun to watch. Anggi danced the Tari Saman with us in February and is in Andrew's MPA program.

Anggita, Myrna (my mom), and Angelia

So, now I'm home and am thinking about everything that's on the menu for tomorrow and it's kind of overwhelming. We'll get up in the morning and get ready for church—Andrew will play the organ which means I'll be alone with the girls for a large chunk of sacrament meeting (we went to a friend's baby blessing a couple of weeks ago and I was almost laughing about how easy it was to have Andrew sitting with me through all of sacrament meeting) and then we teach Sunbeams (which is fun but exhausting). Then we still have more fun Easter things to do—the Smackdown, an egg hunt, an Easter dinner.

Should that list make me feel tired? Maybe I'm just feeling tired in general...