Easter 2013

Just like Santa Claus, we don't do the Easter Bunny here. The only time I am really bothered by the lack of belief in magical beings in our household is when I see how excited Hope gets about the stories from her friends about the Easter bunny or Santa Claus or a leprechaun. I am impressed that even though I have straight out told her that there is no Easter Bunny and that the real "Santa Claus" died a very long time ago she still believes. (I've never told her that leprechauns do not exist because quite frankly I still think they might. Shhh, don't tell Ben!)
 

 Even though we don't do the Easter bunny, we still do the other fun elements of the holiday.
 

Saturday we had a neighborhood Easter egg hunt and that began the weekend's sugar fest. I had to talk Noah into participating and he still didn't want to carry a basket so he just put his share in with Eden's.

 

 

Sorry for the blur - they were moving fast!

 

 

Eden is going through a phase where she talks like a pirate out of the side of her mouth like shown above. Here she is telling a sister from our ward that she "wants candy now."

 

 

Eden and Hope with Hope's friend Aubrey and her little sister Brooke.

 

 

On Easter morning the kids stood outside the computer room waiting for the okay to be let in.

 

 

You can see they are very excited, and daddy doesn't disappoint. He always goes overboard with the presents.

 

 

We tried to combine spring shopping with Easter so in addition to Easter baskets, the kids also got some new outfits.

 

 

Then it was time to hunt eggs! Ben wanted to fill what seemed like a thousand eggs the night before. The kids got so much candy it feels like Halloween around here. However, it did prolong the actual Easter egg hunt, which was fun.

 

 

At first Eden would pick one up and open it, then throw it on the porch after getting the prize out. Daddy became her egg-hunting assistant.

 

 

Look at my beautiful girl. She is growing up way too fast. Luckily, just when I feel like she's getting too big, she throws the most unbelievable crazy tantrum to remind me that she is still my baby...and very spoiled.

 

 

Noah spotted all the eggs on the playhouse and would roll a couple down the slide to his baby sister. What a good big brother. :) Also, check out the pink bat in the tree in the background. Daddy got creative and used the bat to put an egg up there.

 

 

 

Look at all those eggs!

Now look at what seems to be tiny grave sites in our backyard. Last year Ben dug these tiny little gardens. He did it while our fence was still down, so I'm sure we freaked out more than one neighbor with what looked like our own personal graveyard.

 

 

Noah's basket was so full that he kept dropping eggs, so he transferred them all to a box so he could get more.

 

 

And finally Eden's bucket was full. Tricky daddy filled several of the eggs with silly notes and Eden ended up with all of them. She was quite disappointed to find empty candy wrappers and paper in a few of her eggs.

 

 

This Easter I wanted to make sure that the children understood why we celebrate this day and that it is because of Christ and not a gigantic bunny littering people's yard with eggs. So, I showed them a video about the resurrection that may or may not have been age appropriate. Ben doesn't think it was, but it definitely could have been worse, and I got it from lds.org, so all in all, I think I am okay with it. It did make the children a little sad, but they quickly got over it and continued eating their candy. Later, during one of the talks in sacrament meeting Hope told me that the lady was talking about the same thing that happened in the video we watched. She has had a lot of questions about Jesus lately and I think it was helpful for her to see Him in the form of a person and make the connection that He died for her so she could live again.

OR...

soon she will start having some major issues resulting from watching the video. Only time will tell. Moving on. Happy Easter!