Happy Easter!

Last week on Palm Sunday, several of our friends from church got together at a park and had a picnic and an egg hunt. I started this tradition with our friends when Samuel was an infant, and it's held up for 7 years now! And this year, we brought Amanda to church with us and afterwards she came to the egg hunt, which made the day even more special.

Then Avery had an egg hunt at school on Thursday of last week.

And my Mothers of Preschoolers group had an egg hunt on Good Friday. Since Samuel and Avery were off from school, they got to go with me and Isaac. And Hector even took the morning off to spend some time with us too! It was a fun morning! Avery is sitting next to her friend, Lily Grace. Avery loves the fact that Lily has the same middle name as her, and that Lily's birthday is June 7 (the same as Samuel's). After 3 egg hunts, I was pleasantly surprised at just how little candy the kids got. They did however get tons of stickers, yo-yos, playdough, plastic rings, bubbles, and plastic frogs!

This year for Easter, I was feeling crafty (even a bit more crafty than I normally feel!). I got the idea from something my mom sent me last year right after Easter. I was going to use real eggs, but after a few failed attempts I decided to go with the much more sturdy plastic eggs, mostly because plastic eggs respond to a hot glue gun much more positively than real eggs. Here are my Easter creations that I made for the kids. I know, they're kind-of goofy... but I had fun making them and the kids thought they were cool. So, that's all that really matters. :-)

From left to right we a mouse, pig, Superman (Yes, Superman!), chicken, bumble bee and bunny rabbit.

And because I felt the need to pack in as much as possible this Easter season, and also because I was afraid there simply would not be enough Easter pictures on here (HA!), we also dyed eggs yesterday... Doesn't Samuel looked thrilled? Isaac did not want to stop. He had SO much fun, it was unreal! He must have sat at the table for over 45 minutes, long after Samuel and Avery had gotten up to go play... And while Avery wasn't looking, I took some of the eggs that she had already dyed, and let Isaac "re-dye" them. Hey, a mom's got to do what a mom's got to do... :-)

Woo Hoo!

Then last night we had a family movie night. We started doing this several months ago as a way for our family to re-connect after a busy school and work week. And it's been a big hit! Samuel picked this week's movie. It was an animated tale about Superman's life. And after Superman, we had time to watch a little bit of the movie Avery picked out too... Strawberry Shortcake's Get Well Adventure. Needless to say, Hector and I struggled to maintain our focus and enthusiasm throughout movie night. But the kids loved it!

But finally, we told the kids it was time to hit the hay because the Easter Bunny was on his way... Here's a few pictures from this morning when the kids woke up. He's still not too old for stuffed animals - yea!

Avery got a gardening set. This is the bucket on wheels that came with it. Avery thought it would serve a better purpose as a baby stroller for her lamb though. After the kids looked through all their Easter goodies, we got ready for church. We had to fore go our plan to take pictures in our church's garden, because it was raining. But we did manage to snap a couple of pictures at home before we left.

In our Sunday best...

Today after church, we ate egg salad sandwiches for lunch from the dyed eggs we made yesterday. And we'll be eating deviled eggs with dinner tonight... Yum Yum!

Easter blessings to you all!