"Jesus has Risen, Jesus our Friend. Joy fills our hearts, He lives again. Praises we sing to Him this Easter morn. Jesus has risen, Savior Divine! Jeusus has risen, Savior Divine!" This is the song, from the LDS Primary Song book that we've been singing a lot at our house to get ready for Easter. We've had such a nice Easter this year and good time celebrating Dave's 30th Birthday!
The party started when Grandma Di sent an Easter package to us! The kids are always so very excited to get packages in the mail! Emma said when she saw a brown box come in the mail, "I knew it! Grandma Di was sending us an Easter package!" before I could tell her who it was from or what was in it. They enjoyed checking things out. Lucy got a snuggly bunny that she loves to hold! The kids all got some candy and Emma and Cal got a bunch of fun Easter toys! Grandma Sue also sent up a huge garbage bag full of candy, which helped the Spokane Easter bunny out a lot, we didn't need to buy much for Easter. And she gave them some Bendaroos, which they love, LOVE playing with, Little People Easter set for Lucy, pillow pets for the girls and a truck for Cal! Thanks!
They loved all of the candy, of course and had a hard time deciding which one to eat first. This is one time when they can't eat all of the carrots they wanted, because these carrots were filled with colored sugar.
Lucy loves candy now (particularly chocolate) and tries to eat it all!
Cal decided on the Peeps. He had been trying to sneak the Peeps off my wreath ever since we put up the decorations. I caught him twice, but he failed before he could get his mouth on it (I don't think that hot glue would taste so good).
Their favorite things in the package were these wind up chicks and bunnies that jump and hobble up and down, super cute! They race them and have a great time with them!
I love this picture of them playing with the chicks and bunnies! They laughed so hard the first time they tried them and still giggle every time!
"Eat your carrots!"
Lucy's messy face!
Since Jerry & Stacy would be here the weekend of Easter, we decided to combine forces and celebrate a couple of days early.
The kids had a blast dyeing eggs together, like they usually do at Grandma & Grandpa Ryerse's.
We asked the Easter bunny if he could come early, on Friday morning instead of Sunday. Luckily, our request was granted and the kids were so happy to wake up to all kinds of fun things that the Bunny brought!
Happy Easter morning! Commotion all around!
Checking out all of the fun things!
Emma and her "bump it" balloon and Cal got a gun!
Forget a basket full of goodies, Lucy loves that milk!
Then we ate a brunch for Dave's birthday. Since his birthday fell on the same wekeend as Easter, I decided that would be a fun theme to incorporate for his birthday. We had cinnamon roll bunnies that we made (we thought they looked more like beavers though) and hashbrown and egg casserole and strawberries. Mmmm...
Then the boys went shooting for Dave's birthday. This is one of his favorite activities of all time! He recently got a new gun and loves going out with the guys to shoot crazy things - food items, bottles of water and pop, old stuff from around the house like electronics, etc. and the girls stayed back and we watched a movie, and Stacy cut Emma and my hair. See the post on that, if ya haven't already.
Then we did our Easter egg hunt. We lined up, youngest to oldest, as is tradition. Then we let them go! Stacy and I hid the eggs. Stacy found this fun idea to stuff oversized plastic Easter eggs with lunch items. So we put mini PBJ sandwiches in one color of egg, veggies in another, grapes, bunny crackers, and Rice Krispy treats the shape of an egg for the last one. They didn't know this though, but we just sent them out to find the eggs.
Even the young ones were enjoying finding the eggs. See the snow? Yea, it was pretty much bad weather the whole time Jerry and Stacy were visiting! But it was great anyways!
Egg hunting!
I love this shot of cute little Emma! She looks so darn grown-up in her new haircut I just can't get over it!
So when Kaison opened up his first egg expecting to see candy, to his dissapointment all he found were cucumbers! Whaaa? "This isn't candy!" he exclaimed! Ha ha! But once the kids figured out waht was going on, they thought it was pretty cool and had a good lunch!
We then went to the Bookie at Washington State. Jerry went to buy some Cougar Gold cheese, which we ate earlier in the week at our house. It's the cheese in the can that is "world famous", but most you'll talk to haven't heard of it. But it is so good they feel they can charge about $20 a can for it. The kids had a great time coloring at the Butch table. After this, Cal kept saying "Butch, Butch, Butch", but the "u" sounded more like an "i" sound so we had to ask him to stop!
We then went out out to dinner for Dave's birthday at Longhorn BBQ, which we've always wanted to try. I really liked it, I think the sandwich I got was good, everyone else got the buffet. Then it was off to the Valley to the Seventh Day Adventist's "Journey to the Cross". It's kind of like a walk through pageant. It was pretty good. Some of the things in it weren't quite in line with the way we believe things happened, but like I said, it was good. It was nice to have the story come alive for the kids! One of Dave's professors was in it, so that was kind of cool.
This is "Jesus". They made the audience really a part of it, so that was neat. When this man portraying Jesus touched Dave, he joked that he was never going to wash his shirt again.
The scenes were very well done and they spent a lot of time. I appreciate these good people and the work they put into pulling this off and bringing others to Christ.
The Garden of Gethsemane scene.
Jesus being lifted up on the Cross. The kids did pretty well but some of the scenes were intense. We took them and put them in another room where a woman told the story of Jesus on the cross in a little friendlier way.
He is risen! It was a good experience for the kids to get a taste of what it was like, though I think Jesus is a little more gentle and humble in real life. The man who portrayed him seemed to be so bold and a little rough. But like I said, they did a good job and we enjoyed participating in this event!
Then we went back home for pinata time! We figured since we had so much candy (thanks, Sue!), it would be fun to use some to do a pinata! Some of the kids were asleep, but the ones who were awake enjoyed whacking it (including the adults)!!
Kaison, watch out! The boys + bats = bad news!
Tayla...such a goof ball! I love her!
Dave opening his presents. First we made him open a bag of potatoes, then the kids and I got him some potato guns (so much fun!) and I also gave him a gift certificate to buy a holster for his real gun, since I wasn't sure which one exactly I should get him.
The birthday hat!?
This is Dave's birthday cake, or the bunny butt cake, as everyone was calling it. Dave really wanted this chocolate Costco cake, but I really like decorating cakes. So I decided to spice up this cake a bit. I used cupcakes, white frosting, starburst, marshmallows and coconut to put this together. It was easy but turned out really cute!
I made a card for Dave that had an Easter egg on it with a bunch of 30's on it. It was pretty fun to use the Easter theme for his birthday! "Hippity hoppity happity birthday!" it said. I can't believe he is 30! What a sweet man! So we sang to him and had cake and ice-cream and all fell asleep pretty quickly after this long day!
Here are the kids in their new Easter duds! Easter is the one time of the year I sew clothes. I made the girls' dresses and headbands and it was so much fun (and time consuming) to do! Emma and Lucy look just so cute all matching! Cal picked out his new outfit at Sears and looks like just a stud.
When we got home, we made some "tombs" out of paper plates and pictures of Christ and colored them. The kids enjoyed that. I found the best blog that had some great ideas for a Christ-centered Easter. It is http://beinglds.blogspot.com/p/easter-crafts-about-christ.html. We also talked about the Easter story from the New Testament, of course. I am so grateful for my Savior, that He lives, so that someday so may I!
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