CVSD: Day 33

At the beginning of March, middle Tennessee was hit by a series of terrifying tornadoes in the middle of the night. East Nashville, where my brother and Daniel's sister both live, was devastated. The storm rolled on to Cookeville (where we used to live) and many people lost everything. It was horrific, but thankfully our family members and their properties were okay.

Fast forward several weeks and our state was put under a quarantine lock down followed by a shelter-at-home order. It's been a hard month. But Tennesseans have stepped up and taken care of each other, even amidst the hardness of it all.

On Sunday we celebrated Easter. Holidays on your own are hard. Quarantine holidays are sad. Daniel and I both had migraines. Daniel's dad and his wife drove over to give the kids Easter presents. They stayed on our upper deck and we chatted with them from our porch for a little bit before it started raining.

Worshipping from the living room, via YouTube, is proving to be one of our least favorite aspects of quarantine. I have never felt more profoundly that "the church" is really the people. And I miss the people. I am so thankful to know that the grave is empty, but we miss celebrating that important part of history with our church family.

We were expecting bad weather Sunday night, and right around midnight things got bad. Daniel and I were watching Netflix. It was a loud fight scene, but the wind was howling so loudly that I made Daniel pause our show and flip over to catch the weather. My app on my phone just said severe weather. It sounded worse than that. I kept searching. Finally we found a news station saying "Tornado Warning" for south east Chattanooga. We are north of Chattanooga, but the wind was crazy loud.

By morning we would learn that the east side of the city was hit by an F-3 tornado. Whole neighborhoods are decimated. Live wires cover the ground in some areas. All of our friends are okay, but many are out of power and there is a lot of damage to contend with. Because of the coronavirus, we are told that the best way to help is to stay home and let the first responders do their work. Even though we are fine, there is an emotional component of this that makes this feel extra hard. Hopefully there will be ways that we can help in the days to come. In the meantime, we are continuing to shelter at home.

Easter 2017

2017 Easter Egg Hunt #1 at Clear Creek Church.

Holidays have gone through a bit of an evolution in our household. Neither Daniel nor I are big gift givers and throughout our marriage we have been minimal in our celebration tendencies regardless of what we are celebrating (i.e. we never give each other gifts, for anything... but we do enjoy having experiences together).

2017 Easter Egg Hunt #2 at a neighborhood brunch.

However, now that kids have been a part of our lives for half a decade, we can see a shift in how we do things.

2017 Easter Egg Hunt #3 at preschool.

Between church, preschool, our neighborhood, and the actual day of a holiday, we find ourselves participating more fully than we probably would have imagined 10 years ago.

2017 Easter Egg Hunt #4 at Alexian Village.

Case in point:
This Easter we attended FIVE different Easter Egg hunts. On the one hand it feels a little bit like overkill. On the other hand, the people we spent time with at each of these events are important to us (and it was spread over three weekends).

Another way we have changed our ways is that for the first time EVER, we got the kids Easter baskets with a few goodies we thought they would like. This is an example of the second child getting something WAY BEFORE the first, but life happens and we find ourselves adapting.

We didn't go overboard with the Easter baskets, and a good portion of our loot from the Easter Egg hunts were shared as we went to additional egg hunts.

Really, it was a lovely way to spend time with people that mean a lot to us. And after five egg hunts, Isaac has this skill down pat.

First up was an egg hunt with our church family, complete with popcorn, a bouncy house, and a goodie bag in lieu of eggs filled with candy.

Surprisingly Isaac wanted to get his face painted (while Jack took a pass).

Then we attended a neighborhood egg hunt that included a potluck style brunch the Saturday before Easter.

I took advantage of loading my breakfast casserole and the boy's baskets into the back of their Gator and let them drive to our neighbors. It sure beat carrying it all in my arms or dealing with a stroller (Daniel missed this one while he attended a men's retreat with our church).

On the Sunday before Easter, I took Jack to an egg hunt at his preschool where we saw school friends and beloved teachers.

They also had a bouncy house. And cotton candy.

On Easter weekend, we attended our annual town egg hunt where we always manage to meet up with dear friends who are more like family.

We have done this egg hunt every year since moving to the mountain.

Jack was super excited when he remembered that this is the egg hunt where the kids get lemonade (in a box) and giant cookies afterward.

Finally we an egg hunt on Easter day at a family gathering at Daniel's dad and his wife's house. The little kids were funny searching for eggs. This egg hunt had the added challenge of eggs that were hidden and took a little more of an effort to find.

Daniel's dad was tickled that we had the boys in their matching Cubavera shirts that he and his wife had given the boys last year. Wesley has one to match so we were able to get some sweet photos of our boys with their Grandpa Wes.

In addition to the egg hunts, Easter baskets, and Easter dinner with family, Jack enjoyed getting to tour Jerusalem for the two weeks leading up to Easter at our church – complete with live animals during bible class. We were also blessed with time to worship on Easter Sunday with our church family, celebrating the resurrection of Christ.

We are so thankful for all of these people that are a part of our lives. We missed those that we were unable to see, but we hope they know how much we love them!

Happy Easter from the Moores!

Easter, 2016

Easter weekend was fairly low key for us this year. We kicked things off with a party at Jack's preschool. It was a rainy afternoon, so we had to do the Easter egg hunt inside. 

Thankfully the kids didn't seem to mind. We labeled eggs with numbers and had each child look for a specific number. Jack's number was 1, so he could only collect eggs with the number 1 on the outside. 

At our next egg hunt he wanted to know what number he would be looking for!

We sent the kids home with a bag of peeps that said "HE is risen, tell your peeps." I had fun throwing together a little design for that.

On Saturday, Daniel's mom and grandmother joined us for the day and we took Jack to his third local Easter Egg Hunt on our mountain (two years ago Jack experienced his first egg hunt, and last year I was on the verge of giving birth to Isaac).

This was Isaac's first Easter experience, but we opted to hang on to him instead of letting him hunt of eggs. Next year he will join in on the fun.

This year Jack moved up to the next age group for our Easter Egg Hunt. Which means next year Jack and Isaac will be in two different areas and we will have to split up. It's hard to believe Jack is already old enough to be in a new group.

 

He knew exactly what to do and bolted for the eggs as soon as the air horn went off. I spent the next 10 minutes chasing him, attempting to take photos.

After visiting with friends, we headed home and spent time playing at the park across the street from our house before our company headed home.

Sunday we celebrated the resurrection of our Savior with the congregation we worship with. The theme was "Out of Darkness" and it spoke to the hours and days leading up to the rising of Christ. I hadn't really considered that all of the events leading up to the crucifixion happened during the course of the night.

After church, we collected our boys and headed to Daniel's dad's house across town. We spent the afternoon with his family, enjoying good food and company. 

Jack was incredibly sad to have to go home and leave all of the kids and fun. Unfortunately it rained that afternoon so we did not have another egg hunt.

Jack solved that problem with filling eggs with candy he already had and hiding them around our house so that he could look for them.

On a random note, at this phase of my life Easter feels very tied to pregnancy. Two years ago I had just discovered I was expecting and we were still staying mum about our news. A month later I would miscarry. Last year I was extremely pregnant and counting down the days until Isaac arrived. So much as changed in the last two years!

Fun with Jack Before Baby#2 Arrives

 

In these final weeks before Baby#2 makes an appearance, we have been trying to make sure we get some special time with Jack. Last week was his spring break from school and then this past weekend was Easter, so we have had our fill of activities. It still blows my mind that in a couple of weeks, there will be two little ones instead of just one in our home.

First up, we decided to take Jack to his first movie. We saw Paddington at the cheap theater. To be fair, we took him to the movies a few times when he was an infant, but this is the first time he had an awareness of the experience. He had a fun time, but had a million questions – especially regarding the projector, the seats and the cup holders.

In addition to the movies, we have been enjoying the spring weather and spending time at the playgrounds around town, as well as visits to the Creative Discovery Museum. "Digging dinosaurs" is one of Jack's favorite things to do.

For Easter weekend, we had a jam packed Saturday that involved the annual community Easter egg hunt on Signal Mountain...

a petting zoo at the SonRise tour at the Seventh Adventist University in Collegedale... 

and a birthday party at a Gymnastics Center of Chattanooga. Surprisingly Jack survived the entire day with just a 20 minute nap in the car. I guess all of the sugar kept him trucking all day.

To give Jack a framework of when the baby would arrive, we have been telling him that "after Easter" was the expected time. We talk about the baby a lot, and thankfully he hasn't been bothered by the fact that it is after Easter and our baby hasn't arrived yet. Soon enough... soon enough.

See Jack tell me about his dinner.


See Jack say the Pledge of Allegiance. 


See Jack practice his skateboarding skills. 


See Jack jump in the foam pit at the Gymnastics Center of Chattanooga. 


See Jack on the rope swing at the Gymnastics Center of Chattanooga. 


See Jack jump off the vault into a foam pit at the Gymnastics Center of Chattanooga.

Jack's First Easter Egg Hunt

I have this theory that at the age of 2, Jack doesn't really care what we do or don't do. Mostly he just wants to play. Therefore I don't often make a big deal about events or visits with family until the day they happen. 

He ALWAYS gets excited when we share the news, and I don't have to worry about his disappointment if things don't work out the way we planned. We have plenty of years ahead to learn how to deal with disappointment.

The point is that we didn't talk about Easter or the accompanying egg hunt until the morning we went to hunt for eggs. About 20 minutes before we left the house, I briefed Jack on what we were going to do.

I told him he would have a basket and he would pick up eggs. He wanted to know if we would "crack" the eggs after we got them. So I explained that they were toy eggs.

Daniel's mom, grandmother and sister Amy, came up to join in the egg hunt festivities. They arrived at our house just in time to head to the Alexian Inn for our egg hunt. 

Our friends, the Reynolds, were also at the egg hunt. Their two youngest girls are close to Jack's age, so they were all in the 3 and Under division for hunting eggs.

When the whistle blew, it was kind of funny to notice that the older groups of kids immediately raced off to hunt the eggs, while the 3 and Under group was caught off guard. Parents immediately started helping their little ones and snapping tons of photos. At this age it is easy to get down with the kids to take photos.

Jack knew what to do (per our talk) and immediately started picking up eggs. He filled his basket, not realizing that the eggs actually had stuff in them. When it was all said and done, he had a decent amount of eggs and we showed him how to open them up and find the goodies inside.

After the eggs had been emptied, we celebrated with cookies and lemonade.

Two day later, we attended Sunday lunch with Daniel's dad and his wife and her family, where there was another egg hunt. This time, Jack knew that the eggs had goodies, so instead of filling his basket, he opened each and every egg before adding to his loot. It was sweet and funny how he learned from the first experience.

As always, each new experience with Jack is a joy. We love to watch him learn about new activities and holidays. It was also nice that we were able to celebrate this holiday with some of our family.