Easter Sunday (and too many pictures)

Easter finally arrived on Easter Sunday (fancy that).  I even got up before the kids and ate breakfast all by myself.  An Easter Miracle!  Actually, I usually get up before them on Sunday since we have 9 am church and the building is 20 minutes away.  But that's beside the point.

Once the kids woke up, they went straight to work finding their baskets.  I didn't give them long to enjoy their baskets since we do have 9 o'clock church.   The kids all tried a Resurrection roll for breakfast.  Only Rex really got it.  When the rolls bake the marshmallow melts leaving an empty tomb--what!?!  Rex's mind was blown.  But where's the marshmallow?--it is not here for it is...melted.  Ok not the same thing as risen but Rex was pretty excited.  Alice and Henry licked theirs and then I made everyone oatmeal.  My kids aren't really into bread or bread products.  Weird, I know.  Greg and I enjoyed the rolls though.

Easter did dawn chilly, overcast and foggy, which made for some interesting Easter pictures.  Alice still hasn't quite got the whole look at the camera and smile thing but I thought she looked adorable.  I had to threaten her to wear the flower on the side of her head and as soon as we were done with pictures, she moved it to the exact center of her forehead so I called her unicorn.

Rex, on the other hand, can finally take a decent picture with only one shot.

And we won't even talk about Henry who is completely obsessed with mittens and is almost always wearing a pair.

This isn't a super good shot, but I couldn't resist getting me and Alice nearly-identical sandals.

I missed most of Sacrament due to the mischievous naughty-ness of Henry and then Sunday school was about who-knows-what (the teacher rambled quite a bit and told a hodge-podge of personal stories) and then I taught an awesome lesson during Young Women's because I am the best thing that ever happened to those girls.  Really, though, the lesson went pretty well.  We talked about the last week of the Savior's life and the joy we can find in even what was probably a pretty horrible week for the Savior and how we are meant to find joy and happiness amidst our trials.  I learned a lot from preparing for it and the girls said they needed to hear it, so pat on the back for me.

We had planned on going to my in-laws for Easter with Greg's sister's family, but his sister spent the previous week on a field trip with a bunch of fifth graders and couldn't (understandably) summon the energy to drive down and then Greg's mom got pretty sick so Saturday morning, I had to come up with a plan.  And because I think Easter is more important than Christmas and because I think that one way we can show our gratitude for people and tell them they're important to us is through a nice dinner (especially on a holiday like Easter) and because I enjoy setting a nice table, I couldn't just throw a roast in and call it good.  Luckily, I have a habit of saving weird things like tin cans and the brown paper that comes in Amazon boxes. I covered some cans in scraps of scrap booking paper, lace and Amazon packaging paper and then cut some of the beautiful flowers from our yard for a center piece.  Then I made chicken cordon blu for dinner (because it has the traditional Easter ham in it but I didn't feel like just having ham) with a side salad, roasted Brussel sprouts, mashed potatoes and rolls.  I did cheat on the rolls and just bought brown and serve rolls, which I usually refuse to do for nice dinners because I feel like nice dinners deserve homemade deliciousness, but I knew I wouldn't have time to make rolls in addition to all the other food and still actually spend time with my family on the most important holiday of the year.

Enough with the food.  We all know I'm pretty awesome by this point.

For dessert, I made a lemon poppy seed bunt cake that kind of fell apart when I took it out of the pan but was moist enough to just kind of stick back together.  Greg was surprised that I voluntarily made and then enjoyed a chocolate-less dessert.  As he should have been but I thought it was a nice, lighter spring treat.

After dinner, we dyed eggs.  I only boiled 12 since in past years the kids got bored before finishing their 4 eggs.  This year they could have each done six or more.  Oops.

I have this same picture of Alice every year.  After dying her eggs, she cannot resist sticking her hands in the egg dye.  Henry followed suit (see above).

Before my mother-in-law got sick, I told her I'd prepare a Christ-center Easter activity for the kids to do and since I spent a few hours cutting and pasting, we still did the activity.  We usually do the Easter Walk every year so it wasn't amazing for my kids, but they mostly played along.  I had planned to go on a long walk/hike around the compound but due to the rain, we stuck mostly to the backyard and found out items as quickly as possible.

Henry got bored after about 10 seconds and decided to push the dump truck around the yard instead.

Then we went inside and read scriptures that corresponded to all the stuff we found (something red, something pointy, something hard and round...you get the idea).  We finished the evening with watching the MoTab Virtual Hallelujah chorus and talking about how joyful we should be that Christ died and was resurrected so that we can be too.  Then, actually, in true Roberts fashion, we ate dessert and went to bed.  Well at least the kids did.  The problem with cooking a large meal is cleaning up after it.

All-in-all, I thought Easter Week and Easter Day were a good mix of the silly (yet fun) secular stuff mixed with the more spiritual.  I feel like I learned a lot about Christ and joy as the children and I did our nightly activities.  I think they learned a bit too, which is why we have the same holidays with the same traditions year after year--so we can keep learning and growing.

And that is the end of the holiday season, which starts on October 1 at our house because I just love holidays.