Easter

I had plans to do some fun Easter-y things with the kids all week as we approached the big day, but ended up squeezing all of our celebrating into Easter weekend.  On Saturday, Jack and Eliza helped me make some chow mein noodle cookie nests.

And that evening we had some friends over and showed them how we do Resurrection Rolls (wrapping biscuit dough around a marshmallow, baking it in the oven, and when you bite into the biscuit it's HOLLOW!)  Our friends were surprised, and wondered "where's the marshmallow??" which made it fun for us.

On Easter morning the kids enjoyed some surprises from the Easter Bunny and we made another batch of Resurrection Rolls for breakfast.  I also painted the girls' nails.

After Church, we ate lunch and had some quiet time before dyeing eggs.  Cat helped me get everything set up, then I went downstairs to wake Eliza up from her nap - I knew she would want to dye the eggs with us.  When Eliza and I came upstairs, Cat had dyed 12 of the 16 eggs I'd boiled.  There were exactly 4 left for Jack and Eliza.  So we ended up dyeing each egg multiple times, resulting in several mostly-brown eggs.  But the kids loved it.

During quiet time, Ben stuffed a bunch of plastic eggs with some candy, small toys from our box-of-small-toys, and coins.  I took the eggs outside and hid them around the backyard, then let the kids find them, giving Cat the rule not to pick up any eggs that were on the ground. There were plenty for her in the trees and other taller places.  As soon as we got started, Eliza was upset that Jack picked up an egg that she wanted.

But she managed to get over it, and pick up a few eggs, opening each one as she went along.  Cat and Jack took the gather now, open later approach.

I wanted a picture of the kids after they got eggs, but getting a good picture of everyone is a tall order these days.  Just getting them to look in the direction of the camera is tricky sometimes. Cat kept smiling so much that she looked like she was in pain, so this is what I got when I told her to try to look happy.  Love it.

Not long after our egg hunt, we drove up to Sandy to enjoy Easter dinner with my cousins and aunt.  The kids loved playing with the kids up there, and I enjoyed catching up with family.  We came home right at bedtime and enjoyed a quiet night after a busy day.

We have been reading in the New Testament for family scripture reading, and happened to be at the end of the Gospel of John around Easter time.  It was great to be able to talk to the kids about the Atonement and the true purpose of Easter as we read.

Usually we spread out the more secular celebrations and spend more time focusing on Easter itself during FHEs and other things, but we didn't do a very good job of that this year.  Maybe next year I'll be more on top of things.  Fingers crossed...