March held a couple of special occasions which will get their own posts (my birthday trip to New Orleans and Paige’s visit from South Africa!) but before those, here is a look at our everyday fun!

I’ve come to realize that life is hard and there are a lot of things to be truly sad about. But Jesus came into this world and has given us who follow Him hope, joy and full life through all circumstances. In this spirit, I’ve decided to start CELEBRATING the little things more, and holidays are a perfect way to do that.

To be honest, I totally forgot that it was St. Patrick’s Day until Michael pinched me on his way out the door that morning but once I realized, I decided to have fun with it. I hadn’t bought anything for the kids (nor do I think it necessary or even necessarily beneficial) but I greeted them with a big, happy, excited “Happy St. Patrick’s Day!!” when they woke up and had green milk ready and waiting.

Later that afternoon, one of Colt’s best friends from school came over with his mom and little brother to play, color shamrocks and make green rice crispy treats! It was super fun but NOTE: when multiple little hands are helping with EVERY STEP of the food coloring – marshmallow melting – rice crispy stirring process, the rice crispy treats end up being hard as a rock at the end. But no matter. 🙂  It was fun.

That afternoon Colt and Finn had a very green lunch.

And when Dad got home that night, it was only appropriate that we kicked off the evening with green beer!

We didn’t do anything elaborate but we made it fun and talked about the day’s special details all day, and that night Colt was proclaiming that it had been the “best day ever!”

That night I snuck this picture via our monitor of Michael tucking Colt in bed (although admittedly it looks more like Colt is tucking Michael in here). If work allows, Michael tries to get home for dinner and if not dinner then he strives to make it home in time to do the boy’s bath-time and bedtime routine. They so look forward to his arrival each night and I know they cherish their time with their dad. We’re so blessed to have him.

In March, work took Michael to Charleston for a couple of nights.

While he was in town, he paid homage to our wedding memories by re-running the “Run with the Groom” event that he did the Friday morning of our wedding weekend. He originally mapped it out with 11 points of interest so we dug back through our old emails and found the route.

Meanwhile, back at the home front…

We also did something BIG this year. We canceled our lawn service, bought a lawn mower, and mowed our lawn for the first time ever! We happened to do it on a Friday night after the kids were down in bed and some of our neighbor friends came over, we opened up some drinks and had a little lawn-mowing party. We were pretty proud of ourselves…

Colt’s preschool also throws their Spring Fair in March so we had fun playing with Colt’s schoolmates and getting in on a little face-paint action.

Both of my first-cousins currently live in Alexandria so we were lucky enough to pin them both down one afternoon and have them and their families over for a bit.

I love that Finn is getting old enough now to be able to do real activities and adventures. I recently took him to our local Nature Center to see snakes, turtles, fish and frogs and I thought he might spontaneously combust with excitement. He absolutely loved it.