Easter

Easter was pretty low-key and casual this year.  We have had several weeks of sickness in our home, which led up to Easter.  I actually thought we were over it all, because no one had shown signs of sickness for about 3 days before Easter, but I was wrong...  Sickness will always lead to less extravagant holidays, but it is always a good thing for me to remember that holidays can still be great, even when you keep things simple.  We didn't have any new, pretty Easter clothes, and scrapped a few things that we usually do, but we remembered our Savior and had some Easter Bunny fun as well.  It was great.

The night before Easter, we colored eggs... always a favorite of mine!  I loved seeing the fun rainbow of colors, and the bright white eggs just calling to be dyed!  Cooper insisted on coloring a red one, and it was so cute to see his bright red egg, with white scribbles, completed with fire truck and baseball stickers.  It was fun to watch him really get into the egg dying this year, and understand Easter more.  Sydney of course, wanted a purple egg, and loved the whole process. So fun!  Does anyone else have a problem with the pink dye?  Our pink ones never seem to turn out!

Sunday morning, we got ready and headed to church.  Sydney wasn't sure if the Easter Bunny had come yet, so she decided to leave some carrots on the chair by the window, just in case.  We told her we would look for baskets when we got home from church.  As soon as we got to church and sat down in the chapel, Sydney started complaining that her tummy was sick, and by the end of the first sacrament prayer she was literally in tears.  We headed for the bathroom, but didn't quite make it to the toilet before she threw up.  So, I had a sick daughter to take care of, some carpet to clean, and a bathroom floor to mop.  There was a nice sister who was visiting our ward who found the custodial closet, and helped me clean up.  It was so nice of her!  So we headed home before Sacrament Meeting was even over.  When we walked in the door, the carrots were gone, and it sure cheered Sydney up!  We let the kids look for their baskets before making Sydney lay down and rest.  Sydney found hers first, and Cooper was so excited he was cheering, arms above his head and all!

The kids were so excited to see the candy and trinkets in their baskets.  They loved getting new sunglasses and flip-flops, and have liked drinking out of their new water bottles.  I enjoyed a few too many of my very favorite Reese's eggs... but they were oh so yummy!

After baskets, we rested, watched some movies, and took it easy.  I made some orange rolls for dinner, and prepared for our egg hunt.  Later, we headed over to my family's house for dinner.  We did some Easter Egg Scriptures this year, to try and focus more on our Savior.  We had 12 eggs, each with a scripture and an object to represent something that happened during the last week of our Savior's life, leading up to His resurrection.  It was a fun way to get the kids involved and to feel the spirit of Easter.

We also did an egg hunt, like the one we did last year, where we had activities inside of the eggs.  We had fun telling favorite memories, racing each other, picking teams for baseball, taking turns on the skip-it, and hula hooping.  Such a fun tradition that we will probably keep doing.

Despite some sickness, we had a great Easter.  We hope all our friends and family did too!