Easter Time

We didn't get a whole lot of good pictures, but the kids did get to do some fun stuff for Easter time. The weekend before Easter, we went to a party at the base. There was food, crafts, and of course an Easter Egg hunt. Luckily I got the kids to eat before the egg hunt, because after that, Andrew was pretty focused on his candy. Eden enjoyed making all the different crafts available, all the way until they were cleaning up and it was time to go home.


On Saturday we had planned to do an outsided hunt with some of our neighbors, but almost everyone backed out because of the cold windy weather. So, it was just Eden and Andrew and their friends Anna and Kaid. The kids had fun despite the cold wind, but they were more than ready to back inside after all the eggs had been found.


On Sunday, I had just enough time to take a few pictures of the kids before church (none of them turned out very good). We're planning to take some of all of us in a couple weeks when Scott won't have to be gone all day for church. Scott and I were preparing to give talks on Easter Sunday, so the baskets weren't ready in the morning and I wasn't sure how the bunny was going to make it to our house undetected. I managed to sneak a few minutes alone to get them ready(just chocolate bunnies and chocolate eggs, we were going to start doing a chocolate bunny and a Sunday book as a tradition, but we forgot about that until too late) in our bedroom and shut the door. My plan was to move them from my bed to the downstairs after I got the kids in the car for church. But, somehow in the last few minutes before getting the kids in the car, Eden got into my room and discovered that "the Easter bunny had been super fast and sneaky while we were taking pictures outside, and left everything in Mommy and Daddy's room." I was able to happily convince them that we should wait until after church to dive into the baskets. I guess that all worked out in the end.


I had boiled eggs to dye on Saturday too, but we ended up having friends over for pizza and movie night (baby-sitting trade). So, we dyed our eggs on Monday morning and did a little hunt and Easter lesson for FHE.
I think we might ask the Easter bunny to visit us on Saturday after this. I was a little suprised at how distracted/obsessed the kids in Primary (and my own) were with the eggs and candy and bunny side of the holiday. We used "Resurrection Eggs" this year to try to teach the kids about the real reason we celebrate Easter. Mostly they fought over the things inside the eggs. The eggs focused a lot more on the bad things leading up to Christ's death than I would like, but I found directions for a different version that focused more on what happened after Christ died, so I think I'll modify our set for next year.
I can't say I enjoyed giving my talk on Sunday, but I did enjoy preparing for it. It just happened that our Book Club is reading "21 Days Closer to Christ" by Emily Freeman, so I had already been focusing on my relationship with my Savior more when they asked us to give talks. FYI- I wouldn't say this book has been one of my all-time favorites, but there have been some of the chapters that really helped me to recognize the Lord's hand in my life in ways I hadn't before. I haven't quite finished the book yet, I think I'm averaging 3 days for each chapter- not because the chapters are long, but I keep forgeting to think about the application aspect throughout the day, so I end trying again for a few days. I think a week per chapter would be more reasonable (something the author addresses at the beginning), but I'm trying to finish it before book club this Saturday.
Anyway, this post is a bit of a ramble, but I wanted to blog about our Easter.