Easter at Our House

Oh, Easter! It's almost as fun as Christmas. This year I wanted to capture the true meaning of the holiday, much like Christmas. We spent the week talking about Christ and the Resurrection. We had a Family Night and watched this video.

We also had plans to visit our families in Utah. We decided not to go, though, because of a number of reasons. When I called my mom to tell her she said, "okay, then we're coming there." I didn't tell the kids they were coming and when they woke up Saturday morning there was a lot of giggles and smiles and hugs when they found Grandma and Grandpa and Alina. SO FUN! We spent Saturday morning at Landon's baseball game. {Austin pulled his loose tooth out while we were there - it left his other loose tooth hanging like a moon-shiner's tooth. We laughed at it all day.} Landon was SO happy to get one of the two hits of the game. It was hilarious when he rounded third base and made it to home, paused, looked at us and posed with a huge grin, and then kept running back to the dugout. It really made him happy to have his Grandpa there watching him.

The boys and Alina spent the rest of the afternoon motorcycling at the dunes while my mom and I stayed home so I could do a couple up-dos for some girls from church going to prom. It was fun to do an up-do again...girls and prom, oh the excitement! I'm sure my mom was a little bored waiting for me to finish, sorry mom! Then we did some Easter shopping and made some GF hamburger buns so we could BBQ when the kids and dads got home. Of course we did some egg-dying after dinner. The kids are getting quite artistic. I should have taken more pictures. Landon made an egg for each of his favorite college football teams: Hawkeyes, Airforce, UofU Austin's eggs were most colorful, stamping and dying and coloring and dying again. And Isaac impressed me by writing his name for the first time on his eggs - well to be honest he spelled his name Issssss, but still, he wrote it on every egg. I love how happy they all were. And it was fun to have Alina there too. She was so cheerful and fun to be around all weekend. She's good at squelching the occasional argument between the boys too.

Sunday morning came early! It really was like Christmas. The kids were so excited to look for their baskets and eggs. Since Aust can't eat eggs the Easter Bunny hid plastic eggs with jelly beans in them; more of a hit then the hard-boiled kind, I must say. The boys had fun with their Hex Bugs and Ella fell in love with candy, especially her candy necklace. My mom described it well: she acted like we would act if we found a million dollars - she had pure joy and excitement with every lick.

I also bought some confetti-filled eggs for the kids to throw at each other outside. They braved the cold, and had a great time with the eggs. Then they got the water balloons from their Easter baskets and stayed outside until they were SOAKED! It was freezing outside, but they didn't care. They had so much fun throwing eggs and balloons at each other - I think I'm going to have to get those every year.

We had a HUGE, YUMMY Easter Dinner and then after the traditional 10 minute fight with Austin to get him out of the car so they could leave, my parents were headed home again. It was such a peaceful, enjoyable weekend. I loved it. I know it was an effort for them to come, so Thank You Mom and Dad.

Monday, the day was cloudy and cold but I put Ella in a little spring outfit anyway, because I was in the mood for spring. Later, I was cleaning my bathroom. I had gathered up all the Easter baskets and eggs to put away for next year and they were in my closet. Little Ella-girl came walking into the bathroom with a basket and looked so cute, I couldn't help myself. I had to grab the camera and a little impromptu photo-shoot. I was wishing I hadn't rolled up her pant legs, but I wasn't planning it so I didn't think to unroll them for the pictures.