Our Easter

I hope you all had a happy Easter! We had a great day filled with candy, eggs, and family!

First, we got our day started with Reagan's goodies left by the bunny. She was pretty excited. :)

We had 150 people at worship Sunday morning! Lots of family in visiting with various members. We also had some visitors, Jeremy and Blythe! If you don't know, they are friends of ours from Demopolis. They came in to Memphis to go to a concert the night before and then stayed at our house Saturday night and went to worship with us Sunday morning. It was so good to see them. We miss our Demopolis friends soooooo much!

After worship we jumped in the car and headed to Grandmommy and Grandaddy's (my grandparents) house. We had lunch with the great grandparents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins and then celebrated the April birthdays. There are 6!

And, as you can see, they don't all behave for pictures. My grandmother said no one else is allowed to marry anyone born in April since we already have so many April bdays. :)

Then the main event, at least as far as the kids were concerned. The Easter egg hunt! Of course my mother had given Reagan a special egg hunting outfit with bunnies on it. And I put bunny ears on her so she will look back at pictures and say, "MOOOOooooom!"

It was her first time hunting eggs but she had lots of fun. She also had helpful uncles and a cousin who would carry eggs in their pockets and drop them near her so she could get some eggs. There was some fierce competition from her older fellow hunters. :) Some of the eggs had ants on or near them. She wouldn't touch them until we got them off or moved the egg away from them. Haha.

We had a great Easter! I hope you did too!

Happy to Me

This weekend was also a weekend of birthdays. While in Smyrna we also celebrated my grandfather's 75th birthday. He's a big golfer if you can't tell from the cake. :) Reagan and Annabelle got to help him blow out the candles.

Saturday we went to cousin Drake's 7th birthday party. They had a swimming party at an indoor pool at one of the hotels.

Reagan had a big time. She loved her cupcake with green icing. It even turned her teeth green.

Reagan LOVES to swim! She had so much fun swimming with Daddy and Drake!

With all of this singing "Happy Birthday" Reagan learned something new.

She's so cute. She just randomly starts singing it now. :) I love her.

A Great Man

Today I went to a service that honored my grandfather, Robert Mullins, for serving for 31 years as an elder in the Lord's Church. I've always thought my Pops was a great man, but it's amazing to hear others speak so highly of him as well. One of his good friends and fellow elders spoke about him. He used a Psalm to describe my grandfather. This Psalm already had a special meaning to me, but now I will remember it for this as well.

The 15th Psalm

LORD, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in thy holy hill?

He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart.

He that backbiteth not with his tongue, nor doeth evil to his neighbour, nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbour.

In whose eyes a vile person is contemned; but he honoureth them that fear the LORD. He that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not.

He that putteth not out his money to usury, nor taketh reward against the innocent. He that doeth these things shall never be moved.

How wonderful would it be to be described in this way? I hope I can be like him.

A Penny Saved...

Yesterday I officially started couponing again. I'd let it go when we moved since I had so much going on and am just now getting around to doing it again. I'm not an extreme couponer like the women on "Extreme Couponing" on TLC or anything, not even close. I just clip coupons from the paper then check the internet to see what's on sale and has coupons that week. Then I go get the things we use. I don't buy things just because I can get a deal. I just use them for the things we would be buying anyway. Sometimes I will use them on a new product to give it a try. It only took me a little while to clip the coupons and look up the sales and I saved.....$9.35! That's not even counting that most of the items I used coupons on were already on sale. I know that's not some huge number, but if you do it every time it definitely adds up. I'll never be one of these women that spends hours couponing and planning and buys so much stuff I have to add a room to hold my stockpile. For me, saving a few bucks on stuff I will actually use is enough for me. After all, "a penny saved is a penny earned!" :)

Opening Day!

On March 31st we did something that had my husband acting like a giddy little boy. We went to Opening Day for the Cardinals in St. Louis. If you know him you know how big of a deal this was for him. He loves the St. Louis Cardinals. As I mentioned before, one of the elders here at Ripley bought us tickets and reserved us a hotel room. We were so surprised and excited. It was a lot of fun to be there for opening day. It was crazy to see so many people there. I think there were over 46,ooo people there that day. Crazy. It was an awesome experience!

Me and my hunny at the game.

One of the greatest baseball players of all time, Stan Musial. Before the game they have hall-of-famers and all the coaches and players ride around the field.

Justin's favorite newer player John Jay

Albert Pujols battin

g. I don't know if you can tell, but he's doing his signature sticking the tongue out. :)

The team and coaches. The guys in the red blazers to the left are the hall-of-famers.

My March Madness

Ok, so it's been a while and a lot of "madness" has been going on. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. :) I'll give you a few short posts to update on all that the Paschall's have been up to.

Towards the end of March I got a text that my lovely cousin Erin was in TN! I've talked about her before, but if you don't know, we were born 10 days apart and did a lot of growing up together. She now lives in NYC so we don't get to see each other much. Now that we are back in TN we get to see her when she does pop in. We went over to our grandparents' house so we could hang out for a little while. Reagan loves her as all children do. She's a nanny so she's great with kids. :)

It was sooooo good to see her! I'm hoping Justin and I can get up to NYC for a visit in the next couple of years.

While basketball fans look forward all year to March Madness I look forward to this even more. The last week of March we went to the Memphis School of Preaching Lectureship. We look forward to this week so much! It's such and uplifting week. We get the opportunity to listen to great men preaching the gospel and I love getting to be in the ladies' sessions. We always get our batteries recharged. I think most people don't realize that preachers need to be recharged just as much as the rest of us. They spend all of their time speaking and rarely get to be spoken to. MSOP has such wonderful speakers who are great students of the God's word. In fact, you can listen to the lectures if you are interested. The Online Academy of Biblical Studies has all of the men's lectures. I wish they had the women's as well so I could listen to them again and again. Justin actually got to speak at the youth day they have the Saturday before the lectures begin. The audio from it is on there too. He was awesome, of course. He's my favorite preacher. :)

It's also a great week because we get to see all of our friends that were at the school the same time we were, see other friends, and get to make new ones. It's always a blessing to be around people who are like-minded. They also have classes for children 5 and under so that mom's can actually sit and listen to a sermon for a change. Reagan had lots of fun hanging out with her future best friend and/or husband Benjamin. :)

When we took her to class we showed her that he was there and she said, "BEN!!!!" She adores him and I was so glad she had a friend in her class.

If Ben doesn't work out or she's into slightly younger men, there's always Brody! She loves him too, as you can see. :)

She also got to hang out with and meet new friends. She absolutely fell in love with Kenadie.

The great thing about this is that she only lives 30 minutes away so we will have to schedule some play dates!

I already miss my friends and wish we had more excuses to get together more often!

Another bonus to the lectureship is that many bookstores set up and sell books. I bought several books! I'll cover more of them as I go through them, but the one I am currently reading is "Loving Your Husband" by Patsy Loden. I've just started the study but it's been great so far. There is a lot of scripture and it's actually a workbook. You answer questions as you go, memorize verses, and there is even homework. I'm really looking forward to really getting into this study.

I always take away a lot from the lectureship, but this year I really got motivated to make some changes I've been needing to make for a while. It will take some time and a lot of effort, but what good things don't? Pray for me as I am working to be a better wife, mother, and Christian. I can always use it!