Easter is Upon Us....

......my favorite time of year! Isn't Easter the best? It is my absolute favorite holiday of the year and I always wish it lasted longer. I love how the world is coming alive with spring coming on and how that relates to the story of our Savior. I love the meaning behind Easter and the promises that it brings. I am so thankful for our Savior and His atonement and sacrifice for all of us. We spent a few of the weeks leading up to Easter talking about its significance in our lives. Easter has even more meaning to our family now that we have someone in heaven, our little Gabriel. What a blessing it is to know the true meaning of Easter and the promises that Christ's resurrection mean for our family. We spent a lot of time watching the new church movies about Christ and have loved them! One night for FHE we made Easter lilies by tracing the kids' hands. It was a lot of fun!

 

Of course there's always the bunny side of Easter, along with Easter egg hunts. It's not nearly as fun as all the Christmas hype, but in a way, I love that because I feel like we can concentrate a lot better on the true meaning of Easter without so many distractions. Our kids always want to go to the Easter egg hunts but this year it was kind of like pulling teeth. They must have all woke up on the wrong side of the bed because they weren't that interested. Somehow I talked everyone into heading down to the Riverwoods one.  We got there just minutes before it started. It was all split up into different age categories. We sent Skylar off on her own, I stayed with the boys, and Ben was with Alexis (hence only pics of the boys). The boys were all set up to grab all the loot in sight, the buzzer went off, and the darted....only to have a few seconds of fun and get a few eggs each. They were not too happy!! Skylar got a few more than them and poor little Alexis didn't score any!! Gotta love those 30 seconds of fun while they last though!!

The Easter Bunny was there, creepy as usual, and the kids had no desire to wait in the ginormous line to meet him. I made them pose for a second anyway.

Maybe it's time to give up on Easter egg hunts, eh?

One thing the kids got on board with was dyeing Easter eggs! I found these really cool Paas q-tip dye things and although they were super messy, the kids loved being able to paint designs all over the eggs as well as dye them the old fashioned way.

Everyone in the family got their own Easter egg!

Unfortunately, like always, the desire to dye eggs continued long after the eggs ran out, but we had a lot of eggs!! We always have so much fun!!

The kids were excited to get their baskets ready for the Easter Bunny to come leave their loot. Silly kids!