This evening our family headed off to the Friendship Garden that was recently built in town. It is quite a beautiful place and will be even more so once the plants start to mature. All four of us brought our cameras and so probably looked like a bunch of freaks but we enjoyed it.
Here are my three favourite people honing their photography skills.
Some of the flowers in the garden. 
Here is our new van. We love it and the kids are so incredibly excited about it that they don't care that it can actually take us places, they just want to play in it. We had a rather hectic weekend trying to purchase a vehicle as Marc's Honda sold on Thursday and we didn't want to go too long with only one vehicle. Friday night was a nightmare as we almost purchased a different one (quite similar to the above) but changed our mind when the battery died and we couldn't get it out of the person's driveway. I believe in signs...and that was definitely a bad one.
Saturday we decided to check out another one we had seen online and with the help of Cam and Ali babysitting our kids, we headed off to New West and returned a few hours later with our new vehicle (new to us) a Pontiac Montana. Even though it is a used vehicle it is in incredible shape and runs really well. We are looking forward to stuffing it full when we go camping this summer.
On a different note... our kids stayed over at Nana and Grandpa's house a few weeks ago and returned with decorated coffee cans full of soil. They were going to grow potato plants. With the help of our wonderful solarium, the plants started to grow right away. It has been 3 weeks exactly and this is what we now have. We put them in bigger pots today because they had outgrown the original ones. I'm not quite ready to plant them in the ground yet as it's probably bound to up and snow on us. I think I'll wait a few more weeks. Who knows? Maybe we'll actually get some potatoes out of it. Here are the pics. Hannah's is the first pot with two plants and Ben's is the second with three.
So what does the above picture have to do with Easter? Nothing...except the weather was so bad this weekend that we rented a couple of games for the Wii and spent a lot of time playing them on the big screen. It really is quite fun and of course my kids (including Marc) spent many hours enjoying themselves.
We did do some things "eastery" though. Friday morning we went to church and were in charge of watching the 2-5 year olds during the service. They were all such good kids and it was quite nice to teach the little ones for a change. Later that day we decided to decorate some eggs. Marc and I were able to partake in the wonderful practice of blowing out eggs. 
We tried a few different decorating techniques and while some failed miserably, others worked quite well.
This morning the kids checked what the Easter Bunny brought them. I'm learning that they definitely don't need as much chocolate as they usually get so this year the Easter Bunny got Hannah the soundtrack of the new Hannah Montana movie and got Ben an Angel Wars DVD. They did get a few little chocolates but it was quite a conservative amount compared to previous years. Then we were off to church to celebrate our Risen Saviour. The kids seemed to enjoy the activities we had planned for them...I just hope it was more than fun and they actually were impacted by the true meaning of this day.
After church I set up an Easter Egg hunt for the kids in the livingroom. I used a suggestion out of one of my magazines and instead of candy or chocolate there were little notes inside that entitled our kids to special family times. Times like a picnic in the park, breakfast out with Daddy, baking with mommy, ice cream...etc. They were really excited about it.
We went downstairs to mom and dad Bergens for dinner. It turned into quite the festive evening as we ate a wonderful meal and then ended up having a dance! I think at one point or another we were all dancing. The kids were great and Ben and Hannah looked so grown up. .jpg)
I don't know what tomorrow brings... my husband says he has plans but the weather may end up changing that. I do know that whatever we do it will be enjoyable as we will be together as a family.
Marc and I were able to spend the last couple of days together as Grandpa and Nana wanted to have the kids. We had a great time just enjoying being together. Friday evening we went out for a fabulous dinner and then just hung out and did some window shopping. Saturday we spent the better part of the day looking at minivans. We've come to the realization that we just need something bigger. Summer is approaching and we love to camp....can't really do that in our car. We went from Surry to Richmond to Vancouver to Port Coquitlam and found some good vans and some not so good vans. We enjoyed an awesome lunch at the Mongolie Grill and even managed to get to Mountain Equipmount Co-op as well. Today (Sunday) we went to church, grabbed some lunch and headed to Cultus Lake. It was a lovely day and we thoroughly enjoyed the quiet, not that we don't love our kids...but quiet can be a wonderful thing.
Now we have to sell Marc's car (1997 Honda Civic if you're interested) and get our finances together so we can purchase a minivan. We are buying used and I think after this weekend we've done our research and have a good idea of what we like. Here's a couple of pics of two that we like. Mazda MPV and Dodge Grand Caravan.
