Carter turned six this past Tuesday! Josh and I were looking forward to this birthday even more than normal, because it was the day we got all our cuties back after Bianca’s arrival!

Carter really got the best of both birthday worlds, because Grandmother made his dream birthday breakfast before bringing the kids home. Then when they got home, the kids got to immediately hold their new baby sister, and then Carter opened presents! Then in the evening, Grandpa dropped off Carter’s requested birthday dinner–pizza–and we had the cake and ice-cream Carter had selected weeks ago. Grandma and Grandpa Monson also came by and brought even more gifts! The only complaints Carter had were that both Fay and Portia did something unkind to him during the course of the day, which he took SERIOUS exception to. He believes, and I agree, that people ought to be exclusively nice to you on your birthday. (And every other day, really.)

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A little about Carter these days:

Carter’s interests are impressively varied. He likes riding his bike and scooter, and is making a lot of progress with each; he likes crafting and coloring; he likes adventuring in the back yard; he likes school; he likes building things and watching Josh work on whatever he is building; he likes reading; he likes video games; he likes helping in the kitchen and yard; he likes dancing and making music; he likes eating. And he’s happy to engage in basically whatever the family is doing. He’s a seriously fun dude to have around!

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One thing I love to watch Carter do is play with the dog. The girls like to snuggle with her or try to walk her; but Carter likes to get down and play with her. He will play chase and keep away and fetch with Charlotte for several minutes at a time. Charlotte would never admit it; but I think she probably missed Carter most of all while the kids were all gone. I wish I had a picture of them playing together.

Carter has lots of fun, creative ways of entertaining himself. He–along with his accomplice, Fay–finds ways to recreate experiences he’s had or things he has seen others use with whatever he can find available around him. They both amuse and amaze me with what fun inventions they contrive.

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Another creative thing that is purely Carter is his “wood.” Whenever Josh has extra pieces of wood or other parts of workshop projects, Carter will claim them. He gets Josh to help him screw, hammer, drill, saw, etc. his things together into some random assembly which he basically always calls his “wood.” He has been doing this for probably about two years, and now his sisters are seeing that it is pretty fun and cool. Again, I wish I had a picture!

For Christmas, Carter got a camera. He frequently takes pictures and videos, and they are always a hoot! We’re still working on getting the pictures uploaded before they accidentally get deleted, so we don’t have a full repertoire to choose from; but here’s a little taste of the fun he has with his camera.

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Carter is also a fabulous brother! I asked him yesterday what he thinks of having 4 sisters! (For some reason, that just seems like so much more than 3 did.) He declared, with an exhausted expression and voice, “Ugh! Too many sisters!!” But the truth is: he loves every one of them. He plays with each of them in a unique way and manages to enjoy all (well, most) of their ultra-girly activities while still being the boy.

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We love our boy! And we are so happy and grateful that he has been ours for six whole years, now!

I know that the title of this post is a big statement, especially considering the events comprising the first Easter. But here’s my thought: everything that made that first Easter miraculous, amazing, world-changing, and glorious is STILL in effect today, just as much as it was on that day! So the events of this past Easter are a bonus on top of that first Easter, and accentuated by that first Easter. So, the title still stands.

Anyway, the reason this has been the best Easter ever is because this Easter, Heaven sent us this little miracle!

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Meet Bianca Reine Monson. She was born on Sunday, 12 April 2020 at 1:46 PM, was 20″ long, and weighed 6lbs 5oz.

Bianca is a name I really liked and Josh approved. Reine (pronounced like the bird, wren) is French for queen. I really like that each of our kids have at least one name (first or middle) that reminds them of somebody wonderful, and I wanted to give Bianca such a name as well. My three fantastic sisters are all named after queens and Bianca’s middle name is after them. They each have a beautiful light they share with the world, and their light has shaped who I am in countless ways. I think it is also fitting for Bianca, because she likewise has 3 sisters. My prayer for her and my other girls is that they can have a love and friendship as happy and eternal as I share with my sisters.

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Some interesting things surrounding Bianca’s birth include some mistakes in the recording of facts. The first one is a little one on our part: we told the first round of people that Bianca was born at 1:51 PM. But we apparently took note of the wrong number on the clock (the 10 instead of the 9) because we were 5 minutes off. 1:46 is the correct time of birth. The other mistake was a little bit more exciting! When the nurse first told us her birth weight, she said Bianca weighed in at 5lbs 7oz. We had been guessing what we thought she weighed and nobody guessed less than 6lbs–she looked really healthy for her 20″ length. We were all surprised to hear such a low weight, but we didn’t question it. Later in the day, after lots of extra tests because of such a low birth weight, she was weighed again and came up weighing 6lbs 5oz. That kind of weight gain is literally impossible so we re-weighed her multiple times. The result was always the same, so we declared the first weight invalid. Apparently that is a very uncommon thing to have happen, because every time we told hospital personnel about it, they would say something like “Oh yeah, I heard about that.” We’re grateful that she is at a healthy weight and that all her extra tests came back with flying colors. And it is also fun to have a story to tell!

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Another thing that has made Bianca’s birth rather memorable is this lovely little pandemic we have on our hands. There was a risk of me being separated from both Josh and Bianca in the name of COVID-19; but happily it was not an issue. But what was very different, and a bummer, is that we had no visitors in the hospital. The visitors I was saddest to lose were Bianca’s adoring siblings. They are staying with Mother (thank you so much, Mother!!!) until Carter’s birthday on the 21st, and have still not met Bianca in person. I am SO excited for them to see her and love her; but I am also thankful that they are being well loved and cared for while Josh and I figure out how to newborn again.

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We are loving this precious bundle, and are so excited to get to know her better for the next forever!

Easter is not quite yet; but I know I will have other things I will want to post about by the time it has actually come. 😉

Anyway, we have been enjoying lots of Easter festivities this past week! One thing that the kids and I have had lots of fun doing is looking at the messages we get from the Church each day of Holy Week. It has been a huge blessing to be able to remember Christ more specifically each day leading up to our celebration of His Resurrection.

Our kids love crafts (I can’t imagine where they get that from…), so we have done some fun Easter crafts. One was paper bunnies, the other was paper carrots with hand-print bunnies popping out. The kids had fun making both of them, and we are enjoying displaying them!

We also did egg coloring. But since real eggs are reaching luxury status, we decided this would be a good year to try out an alternative.

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Another fun thing we’ve done is the traditional Monson-family Easter hunt. Josh found loads of fun things for the kids and hid them around the back yard. They all loved gathering all the goodies they could get their hands on, and have been snacking basically constantly for 3 days!

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Also in honor of Easter, Fay made us some Easter/springtime cupcakes! She decided she really wanted to do these ones all on her own; so all I did to help was get out some ingredients that were up high, preheat the oven, and put the cupcakes in. Josh helped with sugar and food coloring amounts on the frosting, and took the cupcakes out of the oven. Other than that, it was all Fay. We’re so proud of how she’s working on her goal!

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And, of course, there’s decorating! I realized that I didn’t have much in the way of Christ-centered Easter decor–mostly what I had was a LOT of plastic eggs and paper bunnies–so Josh and I made a sign to make a foundation for the mantel. The inspiration came from a sign I saw at Hobby Lobby back before the world closed. Since I couldn’t go get it (plus it was smaller than I wanted it to be for the mantel), we recreated it!

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I also made both the pillow covers on the chairs (the green one is old), as well as the tassel banner. Projects like these are good stress relief for me. It’s just so exciting and energizing to create something beautiful!

Speaking of which, Josh knew this past week was going to be rough for me, so on his weekly grocery trip he went and found a bunch of craft supplies for me to make a wreath with. It was a challenge for me, because I had never used some of the supplies he chose, and didn’t have any prior vision. But after a bunch of pinterest and youtube research, I decided to just go for it! It was a TON of fun to put together, and I feel like it even turned out at least half-decent!

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Here is documentation of some other fun goings on.

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The last thing I wanted to mention is how Josh has twice magically turned ordinary dinner into a party! A week or two ago we ordered dinner from a Hawaiian grill, and Josh decided we should get out all our island themed decorations (of which he have a fairly impressive amount) and turn it into a Hawaiian party! He even got out his giant new speaker so we could have hula music!

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Then there was April Fool’s dinner.

Also, the kids and I played a fun April Fools prank on Josh. We all came down to his “office” where he was working and told him we had made him a pan of “brown-Es”. He was excited to have dessert at 10 AM; but he was disappointed. Don’t worry, though. He got his real brownies later that week.

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