Easter Sunday ~ Part 1

We had a lovely, quiet Easter.  We often host family for the holidays.  Which I love to do, but it was nice to have a quiet holiday for a change.  I know if this were our norm I would be sad as I do like a big family holiday, but an occasional respite from our usual fanfare makes us enjoy our large family gatherings all the more.

Dan greeted the kids in the morning with, "He is Risen!"'

He is risen, indeed!
 
As usual, the kids were SO excited to come downstairs.
As usual, we tortured them by making them wait at the top until cameras were at the ready.
Couldn't resist a photo of them anxious to make their descent and start running for plastic eggs that the bunny left behind.



Ready to go!



The kids are getting so fast it's hard to capture any photos, but I did manage to get one of Kitti who still takes things at a bit of a slower pace.  The Easter Bunny hides their baskets too, which they discovered....



Matthew was really excited to receive a cover for his ipod....



The Bug is like her Mama, and immediately dove into the chocolate.  Who needs anything else?



Andrew is interested in older Mickey movies and he was excited to receive this one.  I remember seeing it as a child, so it was fun to sit down and watch it that afternoon as a family.

 



We sat down to enjoy breakfast before church.  Tulips are quintessential spring to me.  I loved the sight of them on the table.

 

I saw this idea on Pinterest and thought it was so cute.  It was easy to replicate and fun.



I left a couple of treats on the table for the kids as well.



I stumbled on some sweet Easter coloring placemats that the kids enjoyed. 



My handsome man.

Dan and I get up early and are dressed before the children are up on Easter morning.  It's our only hope for getting to church on time. 



Dan surprised us with corsages for Kaitlin and I.  Very sweet.  He did a great job coordinating with my dress ~ I was impressed!



Kitti's princess egg.



Breakfast on Easter has to be both fast and easy.   I picked up this maple cinnamon roll treat from a local bakery that would be a special treat.  I walked in intending to order something else and they were sampling this and it was sooooo good.  Sadly, ours was quite dry.



I love to take photos of everyone in their "Sunday Best" on Easter.  Kaitlin requested a photo with her doll's parasol as we were getting started.



Sweet little girliness.



So blessed.



I love the Kitti is always game for some photos.



She comes up with these little poses herself.  She is such a character.

Andrew was always young for his years (which was sweet and fun as I'm not in a rush for my kids to grow up) and so having her on his heels is a bit of a shock.   This little one is just sprinting out of the gates.



For some reason she wishes that she had blue eyes and she is always pretending or telling me that she's "shy."  The girl is anything but shy.  I'm not sure where this is coming from.

 

I love her joy.  That was one of the things her pre-school teacher commented on about her.  The child has joy spilling from her heart.   What a gift.



So often, Dan and I will look at each other and say, "We have great kids."  (And we know many, many other great kids as well!)  But we just mutually feel so fortunate to have been given these 3 specific children who are so special in their own unique ways.  Their differences make life so much fun.



Dan and I rarely snap a photo of just us by ourselves.  But I think the children (and grandchildren) will really enjoy having these photos some day, so I try to do it from time to time.  I confess I feel self conscious doing it. But I think years from now it'll be fun for the kids to have these and probably poke fun at my hair and fashion.



After we finished photos, we headed off to church for one of my favorite services of the year.

He is risen!!

Easter Traditions

(I can't believe that it is June 1 and I'm posting about EASTER!)

It is our tradition to dye eggs the day before Easter, after the Easter Egg hunt.  On this particular day, my mom was heading to New Orleans with some friends and so I drove them to the airport prior to decorating eggs.  I have to include their photo because they are so cute and funny together.  I have to say, I enjoy hanging out with them too!

 

Patti is in the middle ~ she is a teacher and was part of Mom's original grief group. Gail is on the far right and she works with Mom.  She was invited to join the grief group (they still meet on mondays for dinner) after the first year was over and they continued to meet on their own.

Their personalities are really fun and Dan said they remind him of a group of teenage girls they are just always laughing, telling stories and having fun.  You wouldn't believe some of the adventures they have traveling!  They are all widowed and I am so glad that my mom has friends like these that she enjoys.  She doesn't sit at home feeling lonely.  Though she misses Dad, she is out traveling and having fun and I am really proud of her.  

While the kids were waiting for me to get things ready they played outside with a hammer, nails, wood and yes, I do believe a saw (gasp).  I've come a long way from my early over-protective days of parenting.




And I included a comprehensive safety talk which was comprised of me opening the back door and calling out, "Be Careful!"

After all, things can be sewn back in place, right?



They had a BALL.

Matthew is a builder at heart.  He has been building since he had the motor skills to do it.  It is his passion and clearly where we need to find opportunities for him to explore.  On this day, he built this little stand for his mini figures.....



My little engineer....



Then it was time to decorate eggs!



I love to get in on the fun too.

We did 12 last year and it simply wasn't enough.  So we did 18 this year!  Andrew and Dan love to eat them, so they are gone in no time.



Matthew and his bunny egg that he created with a wax crayon.



We've lost many an egg to Andrew's little hands during this tradition.  But I'm proud to say this year he didn't break a single one!  In fact, I think it was me who broke one!



I love this picture of Kitti.  Crafting is SERIOUS business!  The kids were all so self sufficient this year! And the Bug LOVED this.



Her little hands were covered in dye (who needs to use a spoon when you have hands?!) and I was glad I had little white gloves ready for Easter Sunday.



Long after the boys finished, Kaitlin sat at the table quietly embellishing the eggs.  She loves to craft and was busy for quite a while.  After all, if a little is good, more is better! 



Examining her next empty canvas.



Tada!

Our next tradition are Resurrection rolls.  I love how this brings the resurrection story to life for the kids.  A marshmallow dipped in butter, sugar/cinnamon is wrapped inside of a crescent roll.  (Just as Jesus' body was prepared with spices and placed in a tomb). 





The wrapping part can be a little hard.



Some looked more like squashed balls, but it's all about the process.



The most important part is getting the sides sealed so marshmallow doesn't ooze all over.

After they are baked, and bitten into ~ the marshmallow is gone!!

He is risen!

Meanwhile, Dan made an A-M-A-Z-I-N-G stuffed cabbage.



It was sooooo good.  This was right before it went on the grill.  It has chicken italian sausage, bacon, cheese, sauted red onion and homemade BBQ sauce.



That night, as I was getting ready for Easter.  Matthew folded some cute little origami bunny napkins.  We tried to do it with the cloth ones, but couldn't get it to work.  He did manage it with these.

 

He is an origami master of sorts.  :)  It's fun to include the kids with the holiday preparations.  They went to bed VERY excited for Easter the next day!

Egg Dying, Resurrection rolls, & Spring Break Wrap Up

It's amazing how quickly a vacation can seem so distant.  We've only been back to school for 2 days and Spring Break feels so far away.  I think the memories are hiding behind my laundry pile.

I wanted to write a little about the kids return because life is happening so quickly and I'm already feeling very behind on memories that I want to record that I know if I don't do it now, it will be lost.

When the kids returned home they were so, so sweet.  They couldn't get enough cuddles or hugs.  They were sweet to each other and I wondered how on earth could I have ever in the past felt frustrated by these precious angels?  A few days passed, and I remembered.  :)

We have a fun surprise planned for the kids this weekend.  We're leaving on Sunday for Great Wolf Lodge with Shannon's family for an overnight trip.  The kids have no idea that we're going, and we're not telling them...we plan to just pack and put them in the car and go!  We're not going to tell them where we're going until we get there.  I'm really excited.  Kaitlin keeps asking to go swimming, so this will be great!

So back to our Easter festivities.  After our Easter Egg hunt we headed home to color easter eggs.  Here we all are looking quite serious and hard at work.







The kids love this.  I remember balancing toddlers on my lap as I tried to help and eggs were dropped into cups with a crack.  And now I have 3 independent kids working away.  Even wiping their hands on the paper towels instead of their shirts!



Our finished product.  Andrew and Dan are the only hard boiled egg eaters in the house. 



After the eggs we made resurrection rolls.  True to my nature, I remembered in the baking aisle that I needed large marshmallows.  But then got distracted and forgot to walk back and get them.  This theme permeates much of my life.  I remember something, I get distracted, and it's forgotten again.  Maintaining a train of thought is not a luxury of motherhood.  So we improvised with little marshmallows.  It still worked.



I love this project.  They are simply crescent rolls.  The marshmallows are dipped in butter and then rolled in cinnamon/sugar mixture.  The marshmallow represents the body of Jesus, the cinnamon/sugar are the spices/perfumes, and then the rolls (tomb) are wrapped around the marshmallow and the edges are sealed ~ like the rock being rolled into place.  So it's a great visual for the resurrection story.



This one wasn't quite sealed.  I helped.  Others were VERY sealed.  :)  They are baked and then when you bite into them, the tomb is empty!  We read the resurrection story from all 4 gospels to the kids on Easter morning and Kaitlin continues to make references to it.  I think this activity really helped her understand ~ I was really excited about that.

And next are just some random things....



We went to the Seder supper on thursday night of Holy Week and learned about this Jewish traditional meal...it made me glad I'm a Christian! :)  I'll trade this for a christmas cookie any day!  I'm kididing of course,  but seriously, it was really interesting to learn about the symbolism of the food and the meaning behind it and the customs that paired with the meal.  Pictured above are bitter herbs, salt water, horseradish, fruit, hardboiled egg and not pictured was unleavened bread.

The fact that I was working on Kaitlin's scrapbook inspired Matthew to get down his and Andrew's books.  He sat in his room for over an hour and read every page in his books.  Then he came and hugged me.



And it made all the hard work worthwhile.  After reading that, there will be no doubting in his little mind how much he is loved by his Mama.  And later there was hysterical laughing as I was walking by with my phone and snapped this....



They were laughing at a picture of Andrew on Easter with his cousins and he was crying in the photo.  They thought it was SO funny.  (It was). :)  And let me just draw your attention to Andrew's signature mismatched pajamas ~ paring a summer nautical on top with reindeer pants.  The sillier the better.  A family favorite is the long sleeve plaid flannel top with the summer short bottoms.  That's my boy! 

And a little more spring break fun.  We did a trip to the zoo on Friday.  It was freezing in the morning (we could see our breath!)



But it didn't stop us from having fun.  These are brothers that went to pre-school with each of my boys.  Their Mom, Reagen is just so sweet and I always enjoy my time with her. 



Kaitlin is such a girly girl, but she is so adaptable and can fit right in with boys.  The above picture is exactly why.  She lives in a boy world!  I think it gives her personality an nice balance.

This screech owl was hit by a car and was blind in one eye.  He was really cute and it was a fun experience to get to see him so close.



Here's a confession.  Dan and I have been known to try to block the view of the petting zoo as we walk by.  Isn't that terrible?  There was no getting around it this time.  My kids really wanted to go and they loved it. These goats were so sweet and docile.  They loved being brushed and were so unbelievably patient.  It was a really fun stop.



All in all, this was one of my favorite spring breaks.  I had time to myself, Dan and I had so much great time together,  I did fun things with the kids, we saw some friends, we were able to get outside...It was a wonderful spring break.  I was not ready for it to be over and start school again. 

Today was "Muffins with Mom" and was a special morning at pre-school with Kaitlin.  Tomorrow is Matthew's first little league game.  I am simultaneously counting down the days until summer vacation & stalking the weather channel watching for sunshine and warm temperatures.  Dan and I have a theory that they put a sunny day out on day 7 of the local forecast simply to keep the hope alive and the suicide rate lower.  Inevitably that sunny day turns to rain.  We're pretty certain there's some sort of weather forecasting conspiracy going on.  :)

Hopefully I'll find the time to get Easter pictures up soon.  It was a lovely day.