Happy Easter!

Halle was the first one awake this morning. She was so excited, I could hear her run into the living room, check out her basket, and run back into the girls' room to wake them up. It was so funny. Mia woke up and said, "I love the Easter Bunny!" They woke up this morning and found their easter baskets in the living room. Then they hunted all their eggs the Easter bunny hid. :) They had so much fun. They all got candy, a toothbrush, and a kite in their baskets. Sienna just got a toy, since the Easter Bunny knows she doesn't eat candy yet. :)

After eating candy, and playing all morning, we decided to watch a cartoon about Jesus. "He is Risen." Obviously, Easter isn't about the Easter Bunny. It IS about the Resurrection of Christ. It is about Jesus being resurrected three days after dying on the cross, and Him living again. Just as He was resurrected, we all will be some day. Whether you believe it or not, it is a fact. He died for us. But most importantly, He was resurrected and still lives. How grateful I am for the knowledge of the Savior. How grateful I am we will all be resurrected again after death and can all live again.

A Great Change...

Today, Nelson and I painted 80% of our upstairs. We painted the entire kitchen, living room, front hallway, and the girls' hallway. It took us about 10 hours total, but it was quite easy and fun. (Until the 8th hour, then we just got tired!) But we really enjoyed it, and we both LOVE the color. (Thankyou Sabrina!) :) The color is actually called "Silver Sage," it is a blue-ish/green-ish color, depending on the light and what time of day it is. It is absolutley beautiful! I am sure you can't see how pretty it is in the picture, so you will just have to come see it yourself in person! :) We still have a few things to do before our house is in order again. We are framing in all the windows in the living room and kitchen with white and putting crown on top of them. We are also putting white crown around the entire house where we painted. The color of the paint and the white crown are so pretty together...again..thanks Sabrina! :) I have ooh'd and aah'd over her walls for a while now, so finally I decided to do something at my house. What a day! We are excited to rest tomorrow!

Called to Serve.....

My brother in law, Benson, just received his mission call today. He is the last of the 14 kids. We all gathered at the Cluff home to watch him open his mission call. It was really fun! He is called to serve......... in the Spokane, Washington Mission! He is very excited. Of course, Nelson and I are also, because we both served (me only part) our mission in the blessed Northwest. :) It will be a great mission for him. Anyone who has served a mission thinks their's was the "BEST" mission on the planet, and he will agree no doubt. His mission includes Washington, the top of Idaho, Michigan, and a tiny sliver of Canada. He leaves June 25th to go to the MTC. He will be a great Missionary! And extremely missed! Congratulations Benson!

Decorating Easter Eggs

Last night we invited Nick and Corie and their crew over for Family Home Evening. We had a lesson on Jesus, and the importance of Easter, and then decorated some eggs. It was a little wierd, since it was actually St. Pattys day....so our treat was the green shamrock rice krispie treats....yet we were doing stuff for Easter this weekend!


The holidays are a little too close this year! It was fun nonetheless, the kids (and Corie) had a blast coloring and decorating eggs... Now we have some for the Easter Bunny to hide on Sat. night! Hoorah!


So the final product????

PS I made the rice krispie treats without butter...I used fat free spray butter to coat a large microvable bowl, put marshmallows in, and sprayed the top of the marshmallow with a little butter. Microwaved them...mixed them up and threw in the cereal, worked great! Now they really are low fat.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!!!!

What does it really mean? Who really knows? Luck of the Irish...do I know anyone Irish? Just the girl on American Idol! Did I wear green today? No, but I did make a green dinner and green clover rice krispie treats. What more can we do? None of my girls have green on either, even Mia, who's favorite color is green! (We ran out the door this morning early, and in a hurry...didn't remember to put on green!)But they are more than happy to pinch others without green! And of course they loved the green "tomatoes" (potatoes). O' Happy Day!

Happy Early Easter!

Yesterday we had the "Cluff" Family Easter Party. It was a lot of fun. The girls have been counting down until the party, and they were so excited.

We started the morning off by playing pin the tail on the bunny!

Then after that they had a ring toss, which was fun!

After the games, we went hunting for eggs in the basement...it was 39 degrees outside! The girls were so excited to hunt for eggs with their names on them. As you can imagine, it was chaos with something like 22 grandkids and 17 adults looks for eggs, that let's face it, weren't exactly hidden too hard! PS. Those eggs on the couch weren't dropped...they were "hidden!" :)

Sienna, of course was just happpy to be on the floor with so many things to touch, grab, and stick in her mouth.
But she didn't enjoy the true fruits of the "egg hunt" until this morning when she got to play with her basket and all the contents. After the egg hunt, everyone ate, and visited. All the boys went paintballing in the afternoon, and we played games. It was a fun day.

Happy Birthday Nelson!

Today was Nelson's 28th birthday. The girls made him birthday cards on sunday, and although they could barely stand it, they held out giving them to him until today. We planned to go eat a great lunch, instead of a big dinner...so we went to Tucanos for his birthday. We invited Chris and Jane...of course you know Chris and Nelson had to go to work together afterwards!!!! It was delicious. We got balloons, made a banner and decorated the house. We played games with Nick and Corie and had a fat free ice cream cake for his birthday. (About 7 people in Nelson's family are playing a "Cluff Biggest Loser," including Nelson...so instead of baking another monsterous cake...and lets face it I am a little burnt out....I made an icecream pie really...it was yummy.

I will include the recipe. Overall I hope he had a great birthday. He is such a great husband and hard worker. He loves all of his girls including me so much. We appreciate all he does for us. Happy Birthday Honey!

Fat Free Ice Cream Pie/Cake...whatever!

Annie O's Chocolate Bunny Grahams (Organic grahams)-in walmart cookie/cracker section
Bananas
Lemon Juice
FF No Sugar Added Strawberry Ice Cream (Walmart brand GV is really good)
FF Cool Whip
Cherries
Light Chocolate Syrup

**Crunch up Bunny Grahams on bottom of pan...slice bananas and toss around in lemon juice, then lay them out on top of graham cracker crumbs. (Melt ice cream and fill on top of bananas. Refreeze. When about to eat, add whip cream, cherries and drizzle light choc. syrup. Yum!(Needs to be a little soft before eating...tastes better and doesn't hurt your teeth!)

Gardening 101

I have spring fever really bad. I can't wait for the weather to be warm. I saw one of the tulips, that I actually planted, starting to come up and just got so excited. Yesterday was a beautiful day here, so I started in the morning pruning my roses for the spring. I am just learning all I need to do for this big yard we now have to take care. It is no small feat. It is nice that we already have many things established, but hard because I am so clueless. Luckily I have neighbors who have very green thumbs. So with a little advice I took to chopping many stems off, raking weeds, and cleaning my beds. In one area of our yard, we have several grass weeds that are overtaking the previous owners tulips and other flowers, so I had to get in there and pull several weeds. It was actually fun.
Time seemed to fly by. But as I uncovered more patches of tulips and flowers, it was even more fun. I haven't finished that area yet, but after 6 hours of sun, pruning, picking, and pulling, my back and neck hurt and it was time to call it a day. Oh but the feeling of actually doing something productive. I enjoyed it a lot. Needless to say, I hope that until the spring is over and I can actually dig up the bulbs, re-till the ground and spray weed killer, that I can keep the weeds to a minimum this year and enjoy the fruits of the previous owners' labors. It is fun to get the yard ready for spring. I hope to become better educated as the years go by, because now, it is a little overwhelming. I am getting a little edge on the flowers and such, at least what I already have. I bought window baskets for flowers I want to plant, and I can't wait to do that also! In addition,I have started new research on taking care of our fruit trees in the back yard and the vegetable garden we will soon be planting. There are so many things to learn and do, so hopefully nothing will suffer too much this year, and maybe next, as we learn to be "master gardeners." :) I am excited to see a green lawn, beautiful tulips, flowering fruit trees, and hopefully if we are lucky.... edible vegetable in our garden (when the time comes). I did attend a beginning vegetable gardeners class this morning at Thanskgiving point, and that was very helpful! For now, one thing at a time.