Easter 2010

"Did someone say candy?!" Yup. My dad's side of the family does an annual Easter hunt the day before Easter, and instead of eggs they hide candy. The kids love it, and as a parent I always enjoy sneaking a few treats from their baskets later! This year the hunt was held at a park and it was really cute. The kids were bundled up more than usual since it was a bit cold, but at least the rain held off while we enjoyed our festivities.

Some of the candy was "hidden" in plain sight for the younger kiddos like Lincoln...

Noah loved running through the little wooded area looking for candy...

Before very long into the Easter hunt I stopped Noah & Lincoln for a quick photo. I told them that I just needed one quick picture and that afterward they could get back to finding candy. So, in order to get back to the candy hoarding they were very cooperative posing for one quick picture...smiling and even holding hands! Lincoln's forced cheeser in this picture absolutely cracks me up.

Lincoln finding a spot in his basket for yet another piece of candy.

Noah showing his basket. Isn't he such a handsome little guy?

I didn't end up getting many pictures of the other kids at the hunt, but here is my cousin Lauren with her adorable little son Jack.

And a shot of all of us! Well, all of us on my dad's side of the family that could make it that day anyway...

After the Easter hunt was over, the guys headed to a session of the bi-annual conference that our church holds, while my mom and I took Noah & Lincoln to lunch and then headed back to her house to color Easter eggs! The boys loved watching as we got all of the different colors ready in the bowls, but Noah wanted to know why we wouldn't be painting the eggs with paint brushes like was done in the Easter book we read earlier that week.

Here I am showing Noah how to lower the eggs down into the dye. Oh, and to document Lincoln's fat lip...the spots on my cardigan are blood from Lincoln's mouth. He got hurt in the tube slide at the McDonald's playground that afternoon...he says somebody pushed him, but I don't know for sure. I think every mom in town had the idea to take their kids there while the men were at conference - the place was insanely busy. Poor Linc came out of the slide screaming with a fat lip and blood coming out of his mouth...hence the spots I managed to get on my cardigan. Anyway, I was glad to leave that place and get to my parents' house to do something more mellow...

Noah cautiously putting eggs into the dye. It was cute to watch how seriously he took things.

I love this little face Noah was making while he poked at the eggs as he waited for them.

Noah showing off one of his eggs.

Coloring on the egg before dying it.

Here is my mom helping to teach Lincoln about dying eggs. He was really excited to get his hands dirty and do some of the eggs himself. It was a good thing we had newspaper down when he did it though - he had lots of spills.

It was so fun to watch how pleased he was with himself.

You can actually see Linc's fat lip in this picture...

...but Linc didn't seem to even remember his owie. He was having a grand ol' time.

If we were all just this happy with such simple pleasures.

I asked the boys if I could get a picture of the two of them dying eggs together, and boy did Noah ham things up. I had a hard time holding the camera still to get the pictures 'cause he had me laughing!


I love these two boys.

The next day was Easter Sunday. Since general conference was that day we don't have any pictures in new church clothes, but here is Mark with the boys and their Easter baskets.


We spent most of Easter Sunday at Mark's parents' house. The first activity we did was their traditional jelly bean hunt. It was fun to watch them run around the front room and scoop up all the jelly beans they could find.


Then it was time for some lunch. The boys sat down waiting to say a prayer over the food and I had the camera still in my hands, so I just had to snap a picture of them sitting there waiting for the prayer. They just looked so cute in those little chairs with their arms folded...

Mark's parents with the boys and the delicious spread of food.

The boys eating at the cute little kids' table.

And Mark's brother and their kids joined us there too! Here are cousins Spencer & Zach with Noah. They are so cute with him.

Mark's parents had some cute little games to play before finding little treat bags from the Easter bunny, and then it was time to watch more conference on TV. Mont & Mary had plenty of fun little activities to occupy the kiddos during conference too. Coloring, puzzles, etc.




Here are Noah & Ava coloring. Ava was sweet enough to share a page out of her princess coloring book that Noah really wanted to color.

Playing with Uncle Dave's dog...

Grandpa and Lincoln doing a puzzle...
Thanks to both of our parents for everything you did to help us celebrate such a wonderful Easter holiday. We had a great Easter weekend. We are obviously also grateful for the reason for the season, but that's not something that's as easy to capture in a blog post. I will say though that Noah was much more interested this year in learning about the death and resurrection of Jesus. Those topics have frequented conversations and questions initiated by Noah since then. Just a couple of examples:

• One day while playing "bad guys" Noah was trying to think of the worst bad guy to pretend to be, and he announced - "I'm going to pretend to be the bad guys that killed Jesus". Oh boy.
• Today Noah asked me today, "Mom, will the extinct dinosaurs be resurrected someday too so I will be able to see them?"