Easter Morning!

Easter 2014

It was a pretty low-key but enjoyable Easter Sunday for our family. After church, we took some naps, ate a yummy Easter dinner and then attended a baptism for a boy in Abby's primary class. Afterwards, we visited a local cemetery to remind us all of the wonderful gift of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ which gives us all peace and hope even in death. We hope your Easter was a great one!

On the Hunt!!

We always spend the Saturday before Easter celebrating all the secular parts of Easter (which I love!!) so that we can focus more on the spiritual side of Easter on the actual holiday (which I love even more!)

Baskets arrived (we've never really encouraged the Easter Bunny idea, and it was pretty obvious this year since they arrived in the afternoon! Still going strong with Santa though...not sure for how much longer!)

Excited to begin the festivities...

Checking out the loot...

And the hunt is on!! You better believe Landon was racing to find as many candy-filled eggs as possible!!

Abby wasn't too far behind with her hunting skills!

A few toughies...

Then Jason hid our dyed eggs outside. We did them in the front yard this year to avoid our dogs snatching and eating the eggs before the kids could find them!

Our front tree was in full blossom that day too, attracting many bees (and one photographer!) to it's beauty. Bees and wasps scare my kids silly though, so they stayed far away!!

A great way to celebrate our Easter Saturday!!

Coloring the Eggs!

We spent the Friday evening before Easter coloring our eggs. This was Nolan's first experience with egg dye and he was pretty enamored with the whole process.

Of course Landon and Abby were old pros and enjoyed turning their eggs into beautiful colors. We didn't do anything fun or creative with the eggs...honestly we were just trying to get them all done before family movie night!!

Such pretty eggs and such crazy kiddos...

(Instead of saying "cheese" for these pictures, they thought it would be fun to say "eggs," hence the wide open mouths in these pictures. I guess there's a good reason we don't usually say "eggs" when taking photos!)

Some news...

Easter Egg-stravaganza!!

After soccer last Saturday, we headed to the baseball stadium to attend their big Easter Egg Hunt. I use the term "hunt" pretty liberally as basically its just a bunch of eggs thrown out on the field and the kids race to gather up the most they can in the allotted time. It started off with the 1-2 year olds and Nolan was anxious to get started...

He enjoyed picking them up...

And once he discovered that each egg had candy inside, he was bringing them in two at a time!!

He filled his basket up pretty fast...

Then it was time for the 5-6 year olds. Landon knew exactly what to do and got right to work.

Here are the spoils of his efforts...

Then it came time for the 7-8 year olds, meaning this pretty little toothless girl was finally going to get her shot!

And there she goes!!

This event gets bigger and bigger every year. It is actually coordinated quite well considering how many families and children come out for it. Jason and I were worn out by the end, but at least the kids had a great time!!

How we did General Conference this year...

So we tried something a bit different for General Conference this year. I normally print out the Conference packets that you can find all over the Internet. Those usually work for about one or two sessions, but then they finish them up, or get bored, or start playing, or Nolan rips them up, or ....you get the idea.

So I saw this idea somewhere with different words and candies to match and each time that word is said, they get to pick out a candy from that bucket (but only if they are listening...the key part of this whole thing!!) We picked five different words and used different items in each bucket to vary it up a bit (Skittles, M&Ms, Goldfish, Fruit Snacks, and Froot Loops...we were going with a "rainbow" theme.) We also hung up all the pictures of the apostles/prophet around the fireplace and after they spoke, we put their picture on top of the mantle. This idea worked miraculously as Abby and Landon both lasted through all four sessions of Conference. Nolan was still a little young, but the older kids helped him and he even caught some of the words himself!! We had a few talks where they got a TON of candy and they still talk about those talks and how good they were!! Yeah, it's basically bribery, but it gets them listening to and learning from our church leaders, and I am so not above bribing my kids at this point in their lives!!

They have already asked if we can do this for every General Conference from now on so I think we have a new tradition in our house!

 

Of course no Conference would be complete without making their Conference Tent too!!

Such a wonderful weekend of spiritual enlightenment and not having to "shush" our children multiple times throughout the two days made it even better. I found it funny that they were often "shushing" each other so that they could hear better!!

Port Discovery

We have gotten great use out of our family pass to Port Discovery this year. It expires at the end of the month so we made one more trip down with my sister and her family to celebrate their spring birthdays. It was a rainy, dreary day but inside the museum was perfect!!

Abby showing off her amazing surfboarding skills...

And striking her model poses!!

They have a new exhibit all about Sesame Street. Nolan has just recently become obsessed with Sesame Street so it was a lot of fun to see his reactions to Elmo, Big Bird, Grover, Cookie Monster and all of the other lovable little characters.

We try to have one family membership to someplace fun each year. So far we have done the Baltimore Zoo, Baltimore Aquarium, Port Discovery, Discovery Station (Hagerstown), and King's Dominion. Time to find a new one for this next year!!

Soccer Star!

Soccer season started back up for us at the end of March and Landon was thrilled to be back out on the field again. He always has such a huge grin on his face when he's out there playing and is so fun to watch!!

He loves driving and scoring...

Especially with his biggest fans cheering him on!!

He also has several of his friends from school on this league so it's a great time to play together and get a bit of exercise in too!

They don't play goalie yet at this level, but Landon is always trying to guard the net anyway. Defense seems to be where he excels so it will be fun to watch him advance in his soccer adventures!!