On Palm Sunday at church we always meet downstairs in the lobby, and then process around to the front of the church waving palm branches.  This year they even had a live donkey to lead us!  Here is the procession as we are walking around.  It was cool that morning, but beautiful and sunny, for sure.

The donkey did not go all the way into the church with us :-), but we did get this quick picture of some of the kids with him before the rest of us headed into the sanctuary.  What a great Palm Sunday!

Friday night four of the cousins slept over, and it was a good time.  I had promised Charlie the next time he came over we’d make lemon pies, so Saturday morning while we were waiting for it to warm up enough for them to get outside, we got busy doing a little baking.  Here is Mason, still in his bathrobe, pouring the milk in the pan to get started on the filling.

I don’t remember when our azaleas have had as many buds on the bushes as they do this year, so we were very, very worried about them that night when the temps were due to drop down to the mid 20’s.  We drug out every sheet we could find in the house to cover up what we could.  Our yard was definitely looking a little weird.  I told Jeff if we had enough white sheets we could make these ghosts for his Haunted Trail next Halloween 🙂

Last Friday ended up being a makeup snow day for the kids at school, so they didn’t come over until after school.  They did end up spending the night, though, so they helped me make chicken scallopine for supper, and were there to eat it, too :-).  Here is Chef Mason flouring the chicken.  That kid can cook anything!

Last week when I picked Mallory & Clara up after school we headed straight to my friend Charlotte’s house, because her granddaughter Brenna, who’s Clara’s age, was there spending her week of spring break with her grandma.  The girls had great fun playing together, setting up a restaurant and serving Charlotte and me.  Good times 🙂

When we were over visiting at Gran’s Saturday afternoon, Mallory reminded us that it was the last day she & Charlie would be nine-year-olds together.  I cannot believe it, but I’m glad she reminded us so we could get a picture of the two of them together.

Monday night Mallory and three of her classmates were chosen to make a presentation to the Clover School Board meeting.  Their class had been working most of the spring writing parodies for their history class, & then used the I-pads they all were issued through the school this year to record them.  Mallory worked with her best buddy Ashley, & theirs was on the unjust taxation of the colonists by the British – Mal played King George :-).  Before they showed the videos, each of the girls had to participate in the speeches they made to the board, and they just did a great job.  Here is Mallory speaking.  They had to talk about what they’d learned through the projects, and Mal said she’s learned that “something could be hard and fun at the same time.”  Good lesson.  We were proud.

Saturday afternoon I rode down to Camden with Sandy, the grandmother-to-be, and Kathy Hayes, a friend from church who also happens to be Sandy’s stepsister, to a shower for Lori.  How this child can be old enough to be birthing a baby is beyond me.  She should still be about eight years old!  Anyway, it was an absolutely lovely event, hosted by friends of Lori’s mother-in-law.  She got so many nice things, and we thought just the presents made a beautiful sight.  The wrappings were so color coordinated, even though they didn’t all come from the same place.  I guess that’s how it is when a little boy is on the way 🙂

The precious mother-to-be 🙂

What a good day we had last Friday.  Mason came over to spend the day, but didn’t get there until later in the morning, since he had to go get a haircut and run a few other errands with his mom and dad.  We cooked lunch and took good naps, and then when June got there after school we baked cupcakes and made caterpillars out of them, to celebrate the first day of spring.  Mason dyed part of the icing zombie colored :-).  Here he is doing some icing.

Then that night Boo had a surprise 25th wedding anniversary party for Shea at the White Horse Restaurant in Rock Hill.  It was such fun being with people they’d mostly known their entire lives.  Here is Shea with their good, good friend Chuck, and the Willoughbys – Kim, and I cannot remember her husband’s name.  It was a fun time celebrating such special people.

Tuesday when the kids were at the house, we worked some more on their string Easter eggs.  June and Mason finished theirs up, Mallory finished putting the string on hers & we hung it back up to dry, and Clara tried to work on hers – but her experiment in making it bigger than the instructions said was a fail, and it all sort of collapsed when she tried to add more string to it.  Live and learn.  Here is Mase digging the popped balloon out from inside his :-).  He & June were both pretty excited that they turned out so well.