Easter Eggs and Wolf Ears

While Doug had a week off between quarters, and Grandma Mary was visiting, and the kids had a half-day at school, we decided to go to the zoo for the afternoon. It was raining a bit, but we went anyway and had a fun time. Kate found this wolf ear headband in the gift shop and decided that it was the very thing to make her life complete. She bought it with her allowance money and then wore it constantly for the next few days.   At our annual neighborhood egg hunt, she was the only wolf in attendance.  ( I suppose they might pass for bunny ears if you don't look too closely.)



We used her gelli-printed valentine bag as an Easter basket. Multi-purpose!



Andy didn't get any eggs (he's not pushy enough), but he was happy to get out and play.

We've been enjoying the Spring weather and the flowers!  Ahhhhhh!

Time out for Easter

Easter Sunday fell on General Conference weekend. We're used to that happening every so often. This year it also happened to coincide with theater load-in weekend for the opera, which meant things were pretty crazy. So we didn't really do anything for Easter aside from the neighborhood egg hunt.



Andy was intrigued to discover that the eggs had candy in them, but he wasn't interested in running around and trying to pick up as many as possible. (Unlike his sister, who was!)



While we were waiting at the park for the hunt to start, Kate excitedly announced, "I like pretty much any holiday that involves traditional activities!"  That about covers it!

Backyard Easter

Our cute Easter kids!  We missed the neighborhood egg hunt on Saturday because we were up in Seattle, so we had our own little hunt after church.  Our overgrown yard has lots of great places to hide eggs.




Into the jungle.



Kate took a turn hiding the eggs so I could find them. We may have missed one the second time around.

Easter Cousins

We had an especially nice Easter this year, since we got to spend it with family.  Grandma Mary was here for a few days, and then Doug's sister Erika's family came down from Everett Sunday afternoon.  The kids loved having more people around to play with!



We went to a friend's neighborhood egg hunt Saturday morning, but I had also dyed a few of our own eggs, so I put those out after we got back from Church. Gotta get the Easter basket photos, right?



Andy helped.  A couple of the eggs got slightly cracked as he threw them into the basket a bit exuberantly. 



"How many eggs are in the basket, Andy?"



When I was growing up we once dyed some eggs using onion skins, and we wrapped carrot tops around them (tied in place with string) to give them a cool leafy pattern.  (I think my mom saw the idea in a church magazine or something.)   I thought I'd give it a try  this year (not the onion skins, but the leafy part).  I forgot to get carrot tops, but I went over to the woods and picked a few fern leaves to try.  I wrapped them around a couple of the eggs and then tied nylons over them to hold the leaves in place (found that suggestion online).  I did get a little bit of a pattern.  Probably would have worked better if the fern leaves hadn't been so dry.  I'll have to try it again another time!



Aunt Erika and family arrived in the afternoon. (Yay!) Kate enjoyed playing outside with Chloe...



...while Sabin got Doug's crash course in beginning fencing.  I've watched Doug do this with a few of the neighborhood kids before.  He's really good at it and the kids just eat it up.

We had a super-fun game of Apples to Apples (where Sabin won by a landslide).  The kids stayed overnight, camped out in the living room, so they could leave with Grandma in the morning and go back down to their dad's house in Portland.  Kate was a little too excited at having cousins sleeping over,  but we eventually got her settled down.  (And then Sabin was looking for something to read so I hooked him up with Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians... bwa-ha-ha!)



Doug started a new quarter and was back to class bright and early in the morning.  The kids had a little more time to hang out, and then we got some pictures together before they had to go. (Andy looks suspicious.) 



Hugs! Awww!   We all loved having some Cousin Time and Grandma Time.  We're having a reunion (and Erika and Lee's wedding!) in July, and then we get to see all the other cousins too. It'll be great to get everybody together.

Egg Hunting

We had a Saturday-morning Easter egg hunt with some friends from church.  Four families, ten kids, good fun. It was really sunny, so I almost didn't take my camera, but I was glad I did. 







"I see one!"



Daddy helps out.




Kate's haul.



Kate lined up her eggs to count them.  Andy thought this was very cool.



After all the eggs were collected, the kids had to go through the stash.




Zoe looks very serious (I think she had a good time!)

Happy Easter!

Easter

Joseph, a friend in Kate's class, invited us to their neighborhood East egg hunt on Saturday morning. It turned out to be a gorgeous sunny day and everyone had a great time. Kate collected quite the haul. (We're rationing the candy--think we can make it last till Halloween?)

By Sunday our sun was gone, and it was a little chilly and windy.  One hopes that, having Easter later in the year, it might actually be warm enough for those Easter clothes.  Not quite, but we braved the temperatures long enough to get some quick pictures outside after church.



Kate wore this dress that Scott got for her in Mexico.  I made the little sweater to go with it. 




Andy has a bit of black jelly bean schmutz on his face.

I put together a little Easter box and sent it to a friend in Korea (안상희 in 포항) with representatives of the three Easter candy fauna--eggs, bunnies, and chicks (marshmallow peeps, of course).  She called to tell me how much they enjoyed it.  They don't really celebrate Easter in Korea, so it was something interesting and different for the kids.

Egg Hunt

The first weekend in April is General Conference. It happens, every few years, that Conference falls on Easter. Or Easter falls on Conference. Anyway, we didn't dress up and go to church, but stayed home and watched the sessions online.

Doug made us blueberry pancakes this morning (yum!). Between Conference sessions (after Andy woke up from his nap), I took the kids outside for a little egg hunt.



Andy kept taking off in all directions, and I had to run and retrieve him. Exciting!



The Easter Bunny gets into hard-to-reach places!



"Let's see, what's in this one?" Some of the eggs had candy in them and some had coins. (I also ordered an art book at an Usborne Books party, that I figured would be an Easter present, but it hasn't come yet.)

Happy Easter!

More from Easter

Because I have been informed that it's never too late to post cute pictures!



After I posted the first set of photos from Easter, I remembered that we had this Easter bib to take pictures in.



Right after that, Kate started putting things on Andy's head.



"He looks like a bunny!" Kate says.



I hope these two will be good friends as they grow up.

Thoughts on Easter

It's a drippy sort of day. I remember when we were in Newfoundland, our friend Patrick told us that he always felt kind of down around Easter, since his mom had died at Easter time, and, he said, it seems like it always rains. (Probably true, in Newfoundland.) I was all set to take Kate out with the umbrella to do our little egg hunt, but the rain let up just at the right moment.




The purple egg had a message inside--"Look behind Andy's crib." There was a DVD of Bolt (which we still haven't seen, but I figured Kate would enjoy it). There was also some candy in the other eggs, which I'm thinking we shouldn't have let her eat all at once.

This Easter, thoughts of life and mortality and hope and faith have been on my mind rather more than usual. On this day that we celebrate Christ's resurrection, we also reflect on what this means for our own families. I haven't lost anyone in my immediate family yet (my last grandparent died when I was twelve), but having gone through this experience twice in such a short time with Doug's family, I've been pondering such things. We appreciate Doug's brother Al sharing with us a dream that he had after their dad passed away. We know that death is not the end, and we will be with our loved ones again.

Today I wore the Belgian lace blouse that Matt Budge (an old friend from BYU) sent me while he was serving a mission in Antwerp. Matt passed away in September of last year, after a sudden and brief battle with cancer, leaving his wife of twelve years and their six children. I never met his family but I've been thinking of them a lot, wondering how the kids are doing without their father. Maybe they will find some comfort at this time.

Spring is creeping back--we see it in the blooming trees and budding leaves, and the beautiful yellow daffodils so bright against the rainy gray sky. Life continues.