Easter 2013

 We went to an amazing church service last night so this rainy Easter we hung out here as a family.  After breakfast the kids found their baskets.

 then looked through their goodies with excitement

thankfully i get things on sale all year because i honestly thought nothing about 

Easter baskets until the night before! fortunately i had enough surprises hidden away for each

of them:)

 We did two of Cailey's Easter Mad Libs together...fun times!

 Braden LOVED his book and wii game...and ephram's favorite part was reading his dinosaur sticker book with me and counting his candy. I was helping Kinsey with something and turned around to see that he had lined it all up and was counting it. Eesh!

 next up we dyed eggs

 and made a rainbow without planning it...we didn't even have orange but the kids
had mixed the egg in red then yellow and we ended up with two! 

 little bunny boo....who was a quadruplet....and is no more.

they went back and forth from dyeing eggs to eating bunnies.

 agh!  i can't hear you! i can't see you!

 then we went through the resurrection eggs again and read from the bible together.
today we lit the last candle....after 40 days.

 after reading about it we made resurrection rolls.  cailey and braden knew what was going to happen but the younger two didn't.  still...I love these and the story that goes along. and i LOVE that we did it while Brian was home with us!

putting oil and spices on Jesus (the marshmallow) then

wrapping him up and closing the tomb

 closed and ready to go in the oven!

 it worked!  the tomb is empty!  and they were yummy:) the kiddos also ate all 16 of the eggs they dyed! lunch turned out to be candy, resurrection rolls, and dyed eggs.

 these were their baskets the night before. they each got their favorite food in their baskets which was SUPER exciting for them! so...pepperoni for kinsey, mushrooms for braden, hummus for cailey, and fish sticks for ephram. still cracks me up that ephram loves fish sticks when he only had them after doing Ff is for fish! he literally HUGGED the bag when he saw them!

after doing the blog post i am realizing i somehow and not in any picture...but I was here!

When we were finished with all of our family fun the kids spent the afternoon playing outside and we watched The Bible together.

Family Hunt

This is the first year in a LONG time that we didn't spend Easter at Nonny and Poppy's house. Since we are going there next Sunday for a trip into DC we decided not to make back to back trips.  Poor Ephram keeps saying, "I can't WAIT to see Nonny and Poppy on Easter!" because that's all he knows.

We missed Poppy hiding the eggs in the yard but had a great hunt in the neighborhood park.  I separated and filled the eggs, then Brian went ahead and hid them before we drove to join him. The kiddos didn't know where the hunt would be and assumed it would be in the backyard but we had to make it harder for the big kids:).

This year we sorted the eggs matching the kids' favorite colors so they could find the same amount and we could hide some harder than others. Ephram had Carolina blue, Cailey had turquoise, Kinsey had hot pink, and Braden had yellow. It worked out GREAT! Their eggs were filled with butterfinger eggs, other choc candy, and money." Oh..and the GOLDEN egg was found by Kinsey this year and had 4$ in it. She was so excited!

We'll definitely do this from now on. We also had all the 'special eggs' that anyone could find (these are the glittery, fun shaped, polka dots, etc...not plain eggs). All the special eggs had coupons or encouragement in them along with pistachios and craisins. The kids LOVED the papers!  There were coupons for *free breakfast out with daddy, *free pass back to 1 on the ladder, *free pass for a chore, *free pass to stay up 30 min later and read, *free pass to stay up late and play wii with daddy, *free pass to sleep in 45 min, etc. These were big hits among the oldest three... And Ephram got Panera with daddy and wii with daddy and was thrilled about those! Some of the encouraging notes were, "you are my sunshine", "you are loved more than gold", etc.  They were excited about these too and hung them up where they could be seen. 

the golden egg!

overflowing baskets! braden found so many 'special eggs' that he let the others get some of his yellow eggs.

hate we don't have a family picture! but love these:)

checking out all the loot

Out of all the hunts this one is always their favorite because there is no limit on the number of eggs they can get.  The older two have decided they don't want to do other hunts (at churches, etc.) from now on and just want to do the family hunt. Kinsey and Ephram both want to hunt as much as possible:).  We had a GREAT day of being together and doing fun things...ending with our fun family hunt then church where we heard an amazing sermon.

Egg hunt day

We finally had a sunny day that was going to be warm so the kids picked out their clothes to look 'Eastery' for both of their hunts.

First we went to Baileywick park where LifeCity church had a hunt. They had hula hoops (which the girls loved), bubble, painting, cotton candy, and sno cones! The kids had a blast.

waiting for the elementary hunt in the woods

Ephram's preschool hunt was first and he pretty much ate all his candy before we left. He doesn't get the concept of saving it for later and will walk up with a handful of chocolate with his sweet face and say, "Mommy, I really just love candy".  The upside is that it's all gone. The downside is that when it's gone he expects more.

GO!

After they were all done hunting we left and went to another hunt at Open Door Baptist where Ephram goes to preschool. It was also the 'grand opening' of the new playground which Ephram was very excited about. They had ribs, hot dogs, chips, cookies, and lemonade for lunch! It was HUGE...and amazing how they served the community!

Oh..and sno cones:)

and bounce houses, slides, and mazes!

They also had hunts for the kids but it went so quickly I wasn't able to get pics!

Easter pops

Granny got these fun Easter pop cookies for the kiddos and they were a HUGE hit!

Ephram?

I was searching for Ephram and had looked all over the upstairs. That feeling of panic came as I didn't see him playing in the backyard. Finally I saw the pantry door open and out popped Ephram!  He said he found a good hiding place...lol! He sure did! Not sure how he fit in with the door closed since it's so small but it was so funny after I had been searching for him for so long I just had to grab a pic!