Easter Holidays

We had a really enjoyable Easter holiday, spending the first week at home. Scott only worked Monday to Wednesday.

On Monday (2nd April) I took the kids swimming, on Tuesday we met up with Zoe Dandridge-Brown and Becky Wakefield plus kids, at a local park, then on Wednesday we got on with making our own chocolate Easter creations. The kids each had a massive bar of Cadbury's chocolate, and some sweets to work with.

Jack made a solid smaller egg, which then fit inside a large hollow egg, which was reinforced with strawberry laces:

Some of Tom's wondrous creations: (You can imagine the state of the kitchen afterwards...)

 Harry's nice little assortment:

And Lucy's: (Spot the Mr. Messy who looks like he is having some intestine-hanging-out-problems.)

On Thursday 5th April we also had a kitcheny day.
For what seemed like many days, Lucy had been nurturing her German Friendship cake (adding more ingredients/stirring etc every day). Lucy called it Herman, but it was A.K.A. Norbert, Norman, Frank etc (whatever name first popped in head at time...) It felt like part of the family. On Thursday though, its time had come...
We decided that really, we didn't want to inflict it upon other poor people (one morning for instance, Tom had come down to find it had burst its banks and flowed all over the work surface, and he'd cleaned it all up, bless him), so we decided to cook the lot instead of dividing and passing on some of the mixture. There was quite a lot!

Also, on the menu for that day was homemade soup and bread. I had seen a nice Easter Bunny bread loaf on Pinterest, and decided to do the same. My bread dough bunny looked pretty good, before leaving it to rise:

...but my baked bunny looked more like road kill (or a Pokemon, as was suggested when I put the pictures on Facebook. I was glad to have provided so much entertainment for my friends!)

I think I may have left it to rise for a bit too long - we all went to the cinema to see 'The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists' (a rather mediocre film) in between. It tested pretty good though.

On Friday, Scott took the boys down to Essex to stay at his parents overnight, while he went to the temple. Lucy had already planned to go punting in Cambridge with some school friends, and I finally finished the last job in Scott's and my bedroom - putting up the shelves over the beds.
Here is a BEFORE picture of our delightful wallpaper-stripped and fillered room in January 2010: (Spot Harry hiding behind a Playmobil magazine!)

And here is the AFTER picture - how it looks now. Bit of an improvement!

On Saturday 7th April, Lucy and I went to Cambridge on the guided bus, and had a fun day out, and when Scott and the boys got back, we had our Easter egg hunts (the kids all did a pictures/clues trail for each other). We prefer to have the chocolatey bit on the Saturday before Easter, so that we can focus better on Jesus Christ on Easter Sunday. We had a lovely quiet Easter all by our selves (and going to church of course).

On Monday 16th, I decorated a fruit cake I had made a few weeks before. I hadn't planned it as an Easter cake, but the timing worked out well. I'm the only one who really likes fruit cake though, so I made it for myself! Had a great time doing it, and liked how it turned out.