We made it back safely from our Easter weekend trip to Mankato. The kids were all so excited to be back at Grandpa and Grandma's and to see all of the cousins. We got to my parent's house while everyone was at Maunday Thursday church services, but after that everyone came over for a while. On Friday, we ran a few errands and came back shortly before Anthony, Kathy and the kids showed up. They were here until after supper. My grandparents and uncle came over on Saturday morning to visit for a while. On Saturday afternoon, we all met at the Lake Crystal Area Recreation Center to swim and then stopped back at Anthony and Kathy's place for a short time. The kids were so exhausted by then. Cole was definitely not in the mood to go back to Grandpa and Grandma's and trip on the stairs and walk away with a fat, bloody lip. Poor guy. It took him quite a while to recover from that.

We woke the kids up fairly early on Sunday for church, but they didn't mind too much once they saw their Easter baskets. Ella threw up twice before church, though, and this was without the benefit of eating anything. I'm not sure what was going on, but she was fine for the rest of the day. Just exhausted like the other kids. After lunch at my parents', we headed off to Lake Wilson. Myron had planned a big turkey meal for 3 p.m., so none of us were terribly hungry after recently having lunch. Cory's brother and family were there, so the kids were able to see their cousins that they rarely see. We also met Joanie, Myron's new friend. She seems nice enough. Mark and Shannon had huge Easter baskets waiting for the kids (put ours to shame) and had an Easter egg hunt. The kids loved that. They would have loved it even more if it hadn't been hovering around 30 degrees, I'm sure. We just stayed a few hours in Lake Wilson and make it home between 8 and 8:30. We were all so tired last night and all came home with colds. We also came home with a tv (that will go in Accalia and Cole's room once that's ready) and a printer/copier/scanner courtesy of my grandpa. He was getting rid of them and gave them to my parents to either find a new home or just set them out for the citywide junk days coming up.

Returning home ended up being fairly traumatic for Accalia because we discovered that her fish, Little Cinnamon, died while we were away. She hadn't been looking very good in the week before we left, so I'm not sure if she was sick or just old. Accalia didn't mourn nearly as long as I thought she would, and I think that's partly because Cole asked her if she wanted to share his fish, Little Blue Sunset. We're going to put LBS in a smaller tank today, and Accalia and Cole are excited about the change.

The next time we'll see the grandparents is when they come the first weekend in May for Accalia's dance recital. Then I think the kids and I will come back to Mankato the third weekend in May to celebrate Anthony's graduation. He'll have his RN degree and already has a job lined up at the Mankato hospital.

Today we need to pick up a few supplies at the store. Both Accalia and Cole have money they want to spend, so I'm sure we'll spend a good deal of time looking at toys, too.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that Anthony and Kathy gave us part of the baby's present. They passed along the cloth diapers they had been using with Lizzie - a few Mother-ease diapers and a few covers. What's great is that these will actually fit Ella right now, and she really needs to move up a size in covers.

Better go. It sounds as if one of the kids is waking up.