Easter

This might be a long post but I think I'd rather get it all in one post rather than divide it. Easter was wonderful but we were kind of thrown into it since we had just come back from Vernal the day before. We hadn't really talked about it with the kids or anything and we were still a little worn out from the trip.

In the morning the boys showed us their Easter baskets. The Easter bunny started leaving their baskets at the foot of their bed for them to find in the morning a few years ago and I love it.

They each got a toy in their baskets. Jonathan got a cool ball popping catch game..thing. Nathaniel got a paddle ball.

And Brigham got bubbles!

After church we colored Easter Eggs. For some reason I would only get one dozen eggs to color. That never felt like enough so this year I decided to color 18. I think that worked out. Although that was a lot of eggs to eat later.

As you can see, we were a little impatient and didn't wait for the color tablets to fully dissolve.

After that it was time to go to my parents house for the Easter Egg Hunt and dinner and a million birthdays.

Looking for eggs was good practice in communication for Brigham. I would have him sign "I see egg" and then when he picked it up and put it in his basket I'd have him sign "I have egg". It was fun.

I also managed to pay a little bit of attention to my other children while I was helping Brigham. Jonathan did a good job finding all his eggs by himself.

Nathaniel was having trouble finding is last egg. Jaaromy helped a little since he was the one who hid them.

Hooray, found them all!

I decided to take some pictures of my dad's flowers since the ones at my house weren't coming in as well. Plus, I've done them to death.

Pretty peach blossoms.

Pretty cherry blossoms.

Pretty pear blossoms. These are harder to take pictures of than you might think.

I always think of Alice and Wonderland when I see these flowers.

I might be the only one, but I like this picture.

Again, I might be the only one, but I got a kick out of this one.

The next day we talked about Easter some more for family night.

We had our own little Easter Egg Hunt with special eggs.

Jonathan and Nathaniel were both trying to find the most eggs.

Nathaniel found the last egg. Jonathan was really upset that he wasn't the one who found it. This might make me sound like a terrible mother but I LOVE this picture.

A quick tickle break before we talked about the Easter story.

Each egg had an item inside that represented a different part of the Easter story.

We have a couple of Gospel Art kits and so I decided to use pictures to go with the story as often as I could. Jonathan really liked having the pictures to go with it. He was really into it and I think this is the first year he's really understood what happened to Jesus. It was hard to tell Jonathan all the mean things that were done to him. But luckily, this story has a happy ending.

The last egg is my favorite because it's empty! Just like the tomb. Jonathan was so excited to hear that Jesus came back to life!

After the awesome Easter story we decorated sugar cookies.

I was really into it and forgot to take pictures. Luckily, Nathaniel was happy to take some for me.

Brigham loved the eating part of decorating sugar cookies.

Here are some of our creations:

These are mine. Like I said, I was really into it.

Jaaromy loves to put worried faces on his cookies.

Some are Jonathan's and some are Nathaniel's. Jonathan tends to decorate his with just a little bit of frosting and lots of sprinkles. Usually you can tell which ones are his.

I think Nathaniel did a good job on his cookies too.

A week later we went to Jaaromy's parents house for their Easter Egg Hunt.

I was a little worried because Jaaromy's family does a free-for-all hunt and my boys are...well, timid. Plus, we signed for each egg like we had at my parents' house so Brigham didn't get very many but that was okay, he got enough.

Nathaniel did pretty well for himself. He was the first one to hunt behind the garage and he got quite a few.

Jonathan came up to me to tell me that he was only looking for blue eggs. When I first heard that I was sad for him because I assumed he didn't get very many. But he showed me his basket and he had quite a few considering he was only looking for blue ones. Plus, one of the blue ones had a fifty cent piece in it!

It was a fun hunt and a fun visit. The weather was nice and so we stayed outside for a while.

Well, that was a long post. Thanks for sticking around. Nathaniel asked me why we didn't celebrate Easter for the whole month like we do with Christmas if it's just as important. After writing this post I think maybe we do. We just cram it all in to a few days instead of spreading it out over the whole month.