Disney on Ice + Easter Happenings

 Two weeks ago, we finally spilled the big birthday secret to all the girls: We were taking them to go see Disney on Ice for their birthdays! It made perfect sense--the date of the show was right in between MaryGrace's March birthday and Rebekah's April birthday. The younger girls love Disney princesses and Rebekah, if not quite as enthusiastic about princesses, loves the art of ice skating. Sarah is a bit of an outlier, since her birthday isn't till November, but we couldn't very well skip her, now could we? She just gets an early taste of birthday fun this year.

We wouldn't be "us" if we didn't dress on-theme, which meant, for me, a casual "Ariel" inspired look with the signature green and purple and a red scarf instead of red hair. I think Pinterest would call this "Hipster Ariel," but those are just my glasses, which I had to wear if we actually wanted to see the show. At the last minute, I had to remind MaryGrace to run back in and get her glasses, too, because like me, she avoids the contraptions when she can get away with it.

We've got two Belles, Rebekah describing her outfit as a "Modern-Day Princess" (I thought it looked Maleficent-inspired, myself), along with little Anna and Shiloh, who christened themselves Elsa and Cinderella, respectively, for the evening.

Angel, characteristically, was happy to buy tickets for everybody and make sure everyone got an awesome birthday experience, and drive us to the show and pick us up...but he did not actually attend the show, because he was utterly convinced that "Disney on Ice" would be totally lame and he'd rather save his money and sit in a coffee shop and wait for us to get out than come with us. Ever practical.

Yes, it was a present for the birthday girls, but...I was there to enjoy the show, too, and therefore took only a paltry couple of pictures of the 2 hour performance. Because taking constant terrible pictures is not my method of enjoying awesome shows. This was quite a special event for us because actually buying tickets to watch any kind of live show is not a normal experience for us.

I am happy I took a few to remember it by. I teared up on multiple occasions, and the littlest girls would spontaneously jump out of their seats during songs to come and hug me and tell me how excited they were to be there. We loved the set details and special effects and ice skating tricks, and we gasped with the crowd when Princess Anna fell down (but got herself up again in less than a second!). It was not all idyllic, though, because certain littles were persistent in their questions about where Cinderella was (there was no Cinderella) and why we couldn't get popcorn (15RM for a teeny box that would feed one of us? No.). Popcorn questions were quieted with whispered promises to take them to McDonald's after the show for a snack--not the best technique if I were a parent, but I'm not, and it was a birthday outing, after all.

We've also been doing other things, actually somewhat related to Easter celebrations:

You may have seen it on instagram already, but Angel got baptized on Palm Sunday, following his own research of baptism and coming to the conclusion that he needed to be baptized with a solid understanding of what baptism means. A very happy event, indeed!

With some of our younger friends, we made crafts. The assignment was to make something out of clay that reminded them of Easter--this resulted in everything from an Easter egg to a crown of thorns to a teardrop to a kneeling man to a rose to a cross.

Because we no longer have a large extended family nearby to have a big Easter dinner with, we invited over local friends and had a big Easter dinner with them on Sunday evening. For some reason, we have no photos of the food, but we do have a photo of the shoes--a massive pile of shoes outside the front door is always the sign of a good party, right?

And, finally, in a land far, far away from here, my "big" little siblings took photos of themselves with my Grandpa on Easter Sunday, and I just had to share them because they're so painfully cute and I miss them so much. Besides, if you've been following this blog since I started, Isaac and Lizzy and Anna are recurring characters that you all ought to be updated on once in a while. As you can see, these characters remain alive and well, working hard, with the end of college coming into sight for the older ones. Anna's coming back in a month and I can't wait.

It was a holiday with and without family, as all of them are.