Easter

This whole week we've been prepping the kids for Easter, little by little.  We've been talking about Christ and that Easter isn't about the Easter Bunny.  The Easter Bunny is simply a perk of Easter.  We really got it ingrained in their minds this year.  It made Easter so much more meaningful to me.  Lily really really got it this year.  All morning long she kept talking about how grateful she is for Jesus and that it's because of Him that we celebrate Easter.  Ah, the perks of being a parent.

But Easter sort of started on Saturday.  I was staring into space out of my kitchen window and I saw a little brown thing hopping.  It was a bunny.  Which of course got me excited.  Which of course led me to tell the kids that it was possibly the Easter Bunny and that he must be getting ready to "bring your goodies."  The kids were excited, I was excited.  It was a pretty cool way to start off Easter. 

Then before bed we watched a little video on lds.org about the end of Christ's life.  Lily got close to tears and it's just so rewarding when they get it.

Then the Easter Bunny came and the kids had to go find their baskets!

Yes.  My house really does look like this all the time.

No.  I'm not going to make some dumb excuse as to why my house doesn't look awesome.  It just adds more of a challenge to the egg hunt, riiiiiiiiight?  Consider it done on purpose.  *shakes head*

 Ella not realizing that candy tastes much better without first consuming the metallic covering.

Skyler was seriously so fast that every picture I have of him is blurred.  I kept saying, "Wait!  Wait!  Just let the camera focus!"  But alas, there were eggs to be found.  All while Ella's just chillin' with her basket letting Lily and Skyler do all the work because, hey, they were bringing her eggs to share anyway.  Why actually put effort into it?  Am I right? 

This year the Easter Bunny strayed a little bit from candy overload and gave them bubbles, books, a couple of movies, and the big hit of the day -- plastic tops.  Since church is at 1:00, we spent a good while on the floor with them.

We also dyed eggs on Friday.  It was the kids' first time and can I just say that these 12 eggs win the award for the ugliest eggs EVER.  First off, I did a very "Heather" thing to do -- I broke 8 out of the 12 shells.  Then the dye wouldn't stick to the eggs.  Lily gave herself "Anna hands" when she accidentally stuck her fingers in the blue dye.  I could go on.  It's actually slightly hysterical.

After church we went over to my parents' for dinner.  The last time our whole family was in a picture together was when Thad was blessed, so I brought the camera and this was our biggest gem.  Obviously we have a little work to do before we have our family portraits done this summer....   

And who would've guessed?  The Easter Bunny struck again when Papa was telling the kids a story upstairs!  He left another egg hunt in the backyard.  I was telling my mom how perfect it is that she was able to get Ella over her fear of grass just a week ago so she could participate in the hunt with her own feet touching those intensely scary blades of fescue.  Score! 

My boys have a magical gift called Let's-have-a-diaper-blowout-every-time-we're-at-Nanni-and-Papa's-house.  (You can imagine how horrible it was when Skyler was a baby considering we were actually living with my parents.  It was a daily thing.  Or twice daily.)  The only clothes available for Thad was this outfit my grandma made my dad when he was a baby.  Thad rocked it. 

And last, but not least, we celebrated my parents birthday.  My dad is three days older than my mom and both of their birthdays are this week so we celebrated today.  Much to my mom's dismay, two of the candles ended up breaking and so they read "HAPPY BIRTDA."  So we had no choice other than to sing "Happy bert-duh" instead of the typical Happy Birthday song.  

Our Easter was fantastic and I hope that y'all's was too.