Spring Misc

Here are few miscellaneous family events over the past couple months:

Virtual Piano Recital

Due to the coronavirus, I had to cancel my typical spring recital for my piano students. Instead, I conducted a virtual recital by having my students make videos of their recital songs and posting them on a private group page on Facebook. The format worked surprisingly well! Mostly, I was thankful that my students (including Cody and Jaden) could all showcase the songs that they had worked so hard to learn this spring. Here are the videos of Cody and Jaden's recital songs: 

Cody - "Sword Dance"

Cody - "Let it Go" from Frozen

Jaden - "Captain Hook's Rockin' Party"

Jaden - "I Just Can't Wait to Be King"

A duet by both boys-- "Snow Fort Hideout"

Ian and Ryan's Birthday Celebration

For my nephews' birthdays in early May, they weren't able to have their usual friend birthday party. This coronavirus has sure been changing everyone's plans! Instead, my nephews invited Jaden and Cody to join them for an extended two-night, three-day birthday celebration. This cousin time was a highlight of Jaden and Cody's entire month! They talked about their adventures for SO long afterwards. My sister Kim and her husband Matt planned some perfect activities and kept all 5 boys well entertained. One big activity was going on a bike scavenger hunt around their neighborhood.

The boys had to solve various puzzles-- some of which included football teams or Pokemon characters (right up their alley for these boys!). 

The puzzles led them to find hidden rocks.

Eventually, the boys had to arrange the letters written on all of the rocks to spell out the final hidden clue....

DRUMSTICKS! Yum! What a perfect prize for this warm day.

Other adventures included playing video games,

eating out at Panera,

watching movies,

eating doughnuts for breakfast,

having water wars,

and launching water balloons.

On their full day together, they drove out to Huntsville State Park. It had orginally been Ryan's desire to camp out overnight there, but the state park was only open for day visitors, unfortunately. They definitely still made the most of their visit, exploring and pretending to be ninja detectives. What a perfect boy day!

Since Ryan was still excited about the camping idea, Matt and Kim set up a tent for the boys in their backyard.

In the morning, the boys stayed inside the tent for Pokemon trading. What an amazing adventure these boys had! Thanks, Ryan and Ian, for including Cody and Jaden in your memorable birthday!

Board Games

With all our extra time at home these days, Jaden and Cody have been excited about learning new board games. It's been so great that they're finally ready for all of our "adult" games now. They've tried out quite a few new ones-- Ticket to Ride, Settlers of Catan, Stone Age, Pandemic, Life, Monopoly, Sequence, and two that we borrowed from my parents, Emporer's Challenge and Eureka.

  

Mother's Day

I'm so thankful that God has blessed me with these three wonderful kiddos! Along with Daddy, we spent the day together playing tennis and watching Aladdin.

Grandpa and Grandma Move to Texas

In late May, Jason's parents officially made the big move from Minnesota to become Texans! We are so excited to have them live only 15 minutes away from us and feel blessed that we'll be able to have them part of our regular lives. To prepare for their arrival, my kids decorated a Welcome Home sign to hang in Grandpa and Grandma's new home.

On the day they arrived, all three Schleicher families greeted Grandpa and Grandma at their new home (which we had recently cleaned for them too!). It was so sweet seeing all the grandkids excitedly waving in the front yard as Grandpa and Grandma pulled in.

We spent the evening helping them unload their car,

playing indoor and outdoor games,

and eating a pizza dinner together on card tables and camp chairs. :)

  

We are thrilled to have you living in Texas with us, Grandpa and Grandma! We love you!

Easter in Quarantine

Easter 2020 was definitely a unique holiday. Because of the joy of Jesus' resurrection, Easter has always been one of my favorite holidays to celebrate. It was definitely strange to think about celebrating on a much smaller scale this year-- in the confines of our own home, rather than with a joyful body of believers. Nevertheless, even though our celebrations were done differently, the power of Easter still remained-- Jesus was and still is our Risen Savior. No quarantine or virus could ever change that! Here is a peek into how our family celebrated at home.

Palm Sunday

On the Sunday before Easter, our church typically hands out real palms for people to wave as we sing and talk about Jesus' procession into Jerusalem. Our kids have always enjoyed waving these palms. This year, our Children's Ministry director sent us digital downloads so we could create our own palm branches. Our kiddos each made several prior to the service.

We waved the branches in front of our TV during our livestreamed Palm Sunday service. Definitely a unique, yet meaningful, version of Palm Sunday! 

"You've Been Egged" Hunt

This was our children's first of three egg hunts this Easter. Guess if we couldn't have our typical large church-wide egg hunt, might as well have as many hunts as possible at home. Ha! This first egg hunt happened as a surprise to us. A family from our church connect group hid several dozen eggs around our front yard and then texted us when they were done. The kids loved finding the eggs and particularly loved the candy inside!

Easter Egg Dyeing

I almost completely forgot about dyeing eggs this year! Thankfully, we had extra dye kits leftover from last year, so we just had to send Jason out to buy a bunch of eggs the day before Easter. We didn't do anything fancy, but the kids were nevertheless proud of their colored eggs.

Resurrection Rolls

This activity will definitely become a tradition in our family. I had heard about these rolls before but figured that this year would finally be the perfect time to try them out since we were at home all day on Easter! We started with Pillsbury crescent rolls...

dipped a marshmallow in butter,  

and covered it with cinnamon and sugar.

Then, we rolled the marshmallow inside the Pillsbury dough,

and (literally) watched them bake.

All three kids thought the rolls were simply delicious. I mean, who wouldn't love sugared-up crescent rolls?!

We were all very impressed with the hole left inside the roll once the marshmallow melted. The entire recipe makes a wonderful object lesson for Jesus' preparation for burial (spices, embalming) and His resurrection from the tomb. Pretty cool.

Easter Sunday

My parents had planned ahead and given us money to pick out Easter outfits for the kids well before Easter. So, since all my kids had beautiful new outfits to wear anyway, and since I wanted the Sunday to feel extra special, we all dressed up in our Easter finest for online church.

Jason had absolutely no commitments at church that Sunday, so he was at home with us all morning too. What an unsual Easter for us all! We loved being able to worship all together...

...even if it was just on our living room couch!

Easter Dinner

My parents are the greatest! They decided that even though our families couldn't gather together for a large Easter meal, they still wanted to gift us all with an Easter feast. So, Mom and Dad drove to each of our Texas families' homes and dropped off a delicious meal of ham, fresh beans, potatoes, rolls, and dessert. Then, we all gathered around our individual tables and connected with each other via Zoom. What a funny way to eat a meal!! The food was soooo yummy and the kids were actually surprisingly calm, talking with each other from a distance. Definitely a very memorable Easter meal! Thanks, Mom and Dad, for making this so special!

More Easter Egg Hunts

On Easter afternoon, Daddy hid more eggs for the kids outside. These were eggs that we had kept aside for our kids as a way to thank them for all the many, many hundreds of eggs that they had stuffed for our church.

Finally, in the evening, our neighbors invited us to join in a two-part egg hunt-- one normal and one with glow in the dark eggs! We didn't really follow the rules of social distancing as the kids hunted, but since they'd all been playing together outside anyway over the past month, we figured it would be okay. The kids were hilarious to watch as they lined up to gather eggs! Adley and another young neighbor hunted for eggs in a smaller yard (so they wouldn't get run over by all these big kids!).

We waited until dark for Round 2 of the egg hunt. The eggs were filled with small glow sticks which the kids could connect to make larger necklaces. They all seemed to enjoy the process of finding glowing eggs!! What a creative idea!

So, while our events of Easter 2020 looked very different, we are thankful that we have a Savior who doesn't change. Quarantine or not-- He is Risen. He is Risen indeed!