Easter week in review

Warning: this post is pretty long and contains a bunch of pictures! It seems not long ago we began the "hi agains" in America, but now we are starting our final round of goodbyes. Maybe I'll just call them "see-you-laters" because that sounds much better. Last week we had fun times with friends and family, beginning on Monday with our last visit with Kevin's sister for a while. Nana, Pappaw, and "Aunt Kimmy" came up for one final trip before Kimberly heads back overseas at the end of the month. It was her first time to meet Trinity. Here she is holding her niece (#4!) for the first time. Bless their hearts, every time Nana and Pappaw have driven up to Lubbock the wind has been fierce. Here we are at the park, only we didn't stay very long because we were about to blow away!

Trinity seems to really enjoy sleeping on her Pappaw. One afternoon right after Trinity was born, Pappaw held her for nearly 3 hours while I took a big nap!

Of course she loves her Nana too!

Grace soaked up all the attention she got between Nana, Pappaw, and Aunt Kimmy. As you can imagine, she was sad when they left.

After we said goodbye to family, we had a reunion with some dear friends. The 4 girls you see here called ourselves BEAK in college, as in Brigitte, Elisabeth, Amy, and Kristen. (Clever, ain't it?) We had a blast doing all kinds of silly things together our freshman year at good ole' Hardin-Simmons. Now we are all married with 2 kids each and living in 4 different locations. But Bill and Elisabeth drove up from Houston, while Steve and Amy came in from Clovis. We had a fun and relaxed evening, catching up and talking about old times. Kristen and Mike, thank you for all the work you did to host us!

We love to line up for pictures in correct BEAK order.

Here are our BEAK boys. We all met our wonderful husbands at HSU. Is it unusual that they all have goatees?

The kiddos played well together and loved having a picnic outside!

Steve and Amy headed back to Clovis, but the next day we had a fun Easter party with the kids. Kristen prepared 4 dozen hard-boiled eggs, and we all dyed them surprisingly quickly!

Right after the outdoor hunt...

And right after the indoor hunt with the plastic candy-filled eggs! (It was way too cold to spend much time outdoors!)

Uncle Mike told the Easter story using the Resurrection eggs.

An Easter Sunday pic...That morning, I told her, "Happy Easter Grace. Jesus is alive!" To which she replied, "You're right, mommy. He IS alive!"

Daddy and his girls.

One fun thing I remember about Easter this year is that we got our first BIG smiles from Trinity that day. Technically she's given us some half-smiles recently, but Sunday morning we got the first real ones.

I'm so thankful for the fun memories we got to make over the past week. It truly helps us savor the time knowing we are leaving soon.