Easter Weekend +

I have not been very faithful to my posting the past few weeks.  It has just been non-stop going!

A few weekends ago Ben and I decided to paint our main entertaining room & bedroom.  We finally narrowed down our colors, bought the samples and tested them out.  We used French Grey and Warm Caramel for the walls in our entertaining room and Atmospheric for our bedroom.  The results are beautiful!  I'm hoping in the next week or two to do a post with pictures of our house and I will include some in there.  As a preview, here is the following before/after pictures in the living room:

Before

After

Grover appreciates the new set up and has happily found his perch:

After our exhausting weekend of painting and clean up, we headed into a short work week.  Ben and I had Good Friday off and welcomed my mother-in-law, sister-in-law, & wonderful nieces into our home for some respite from their drive down from Minneapolis.  We enjoyed smoothies and play time at the park.  They headed down to Ft. Madison around 1 p.m. and Ben and I followed later.

Our time in Ft. Madison was fun and relaxing.  We went to a candy-pick up in the park with the girls for Easter, shared delicious meals, and enjoyed the outdoors.  It was a perfectly beautiful weekend.  Unfortunately, I didn't take very man pictures, but I did find this gem on my phone of Nina & me:

A little blurry, but still so sweet! :)

On Easter Sunday, we had lunch with my mom, Clif, my brother and his girlfriend.  We have the tradition of feasting on ribs on Easter and thankfully we had gorgeous weather for grilling.  Before, during and after dinner we enjoyed each other's company and conversation. 

Ben and I both enjoy all of the time we spend with our families.  There never seems to be enough time with any of them.  The weekends pass so quickly and then we are back up to Cedar Rapids and to work.  On our way home from our Easter weekend, Ben and I both agreed that while we would have enjoyed being somewhere besides the mid-west, we love that we are able to take a two hour trip south to see our parents/siblings.  Ben's siblings are a bit further away, but with social media we are able to stay in touch a bit more easily. That will, of course, never replace our face-to-face time, but it helps us to stay close.

Another thing we have discussed is how lucky we are that we both truly enjoy our in-laws.  Thanks, families, for being awesome. :)