My favorite time of year...

has begun! It's softball season and spring training for baseball. (Giants kick off the season April 5th!) The Alveys love this time of year. Kevin's team kicked off the season last night with a win (19-12), Lizzie's team is in full swing (she won MVP award this week!) Tori's T-ball team is great fun, and Joshua continues to work on hitting those fastballs. (Thanks for the pitching last night Julie!)

Tori is on the far left. This is her all girl T-ball team, the Angels. Too cute!

Lizzie lookn' fierce! (Sorry it's not a great photo, taken with my phone)

Early Easter Party

Can you see any of the 'hidden' eggs?

Our Neighborhood Fusion Group at church celebrated an early Easter this year. This is the second year in a row that we've had an Easter party at the Avakian's, so I think we've established a tradition!

We 'hid' (I use that word in jest, as you can see from the photos) approximately 400 egg for about 15 kids...ages 2 (Josh) to early teens. It was great fun! The kids loved it.

We then continued our celebration with our usual feast of too much food. On the menu: a pasta bar! Yum!

Thanks Avakians for another fabulous party!

Uncle Ernie trying to hold them back.
Michael shows off the new 'do'.

Tori and Lizzie w/their eggs.

Big Joshua and Little Joshua.

Brandon and his haul.

Lizzie 'hunting'.

Josh checking out his baseball egg.

Our Snow Trip

Last month we took the kids up to play in the snow. We had so much fun! We bundled them up and let 'em go. It was so pretty, it snowed the entire time we were out. We made a snow man, went sledding and made snow angels.

Playing in the snow really made Lizzie think of (and miss) Utah, her grandpa and grandma and all her cousins. She thinks that she'd like to live somewhere where it snows. I tell her that she's a California girl and that after shoveling the driveway she'd think again about living with snow, but she disagreed with me! :-)

Our little snow angel.

Kinda wimpy, I know, but the kids were still proud!

Josh loved the snow and enjoyed trying to catch snowflakes on his tongue.

Lizzie and Tori about to head down the hill on the sled.

It was so beautiful. This is in Yosemite.

Farm Boy

Women’s Retreat in Cambria

Well, this past weekend was a first for me. I spoke at Flipside's women's retreat in Cambria. We had over 60 women in attendance and it was amazing! Wow!

The theme that God laid on my heart back in October was Celebrating Every Day. I thought, "Cool, that will be easy to talk about." As I dug into the topic, God revealed some pretty heavy stuff. I broke it into three sessions with a little devotional on Sunday. We covered Why God Wants Us to Celebrate, What Keeps Us from Celebrating, and How to Celebrate Every Day. The devotional I talked about on Sunday was based on 1 Corinthians 12 talking about different parts of the body. It tied in pretty nicely.

I had such an amazing time talking to these women. Not once was I nervous! I know that there was a band of prayer warriors protecting us through the entire weekend. I had so much fun!

We stayed at a campground in Cambria, it was so beautiful. We watched deer, seals and whales from the deck of the lodge, very cool!

God really gets all the credit for an amazing weekend. Thanks to Michelle Sassano for taking care of all the details! You rock!