Easter Love

Spring finally arrived!  Along with lots of pollen, sneezes, springtime and Easter songs, beautiful "popcorn trees", brightly colored eggs, and fun outside!

As some of our siblings rolled into town for Easter and Annalee's birthday, we indulged in a Christmas present we had been saving...Syracuse pasta!

My family has a tradition of throwing candy all over the yard for a fast-paced hunt!  I filled some eggs for extra fun - a little more traditional hunting.

Annalee's second Easter! She did some hunting with a little help this year. :)

...it involved her favorite thing...putting things into a container (and taking them out.  Ha!  Next year she'll want to leave them in there, I think!).

Though it looks like he is crying, I can assure you that Connor was psyched about loading up his basket and was squinting in the sun/making a cheese face!

Lots of orange and blue hunting for that candy!  Savannah wanted in on the action too.  She didn't get any candy, but I'm pretty sure she had some cupcake later while Annalee was demolishing hers!

Reaching up on the fencepost!

Last one in the crook of the tree.  Thanks for the lift, Lola!

Mmmm, Easter dinner.  Everyone helped with the cooking and it was delicious!  There are Annalee's birthday decorations, by the way. ;)  They didn't make it into her birthday post!

We spent Easter morning at church together.  Here's Con with one of his best buddies...Amburger Burger!

I got to do some special music and share the Easter story with our 2-4 year old classes.  I did this once before during Christmas services, but this time my bro-in-law Jay came and played the guitar, which made it MUCH better!  It's nice to be able to dance around with the kids and do motions without also trying to play piano/guitar!  Thankfully all of the sisters came and held onto our kids and helped me pass out instruments, so everything went very smoothly and I think the kids had a great time (about 70 total!).

Thank you to Christy at Kinder Companie for making our Easter bows.  One for Annalee, one for Connor...and one for Jonathan!!!!  How cute are they?

Look at all this beautiful family!  We are so blessed.  Annalee fell asleep during the service so we let her snooze away.  I want you to know how happy it makes my heart that still, two weeks after Easter, Connor is still singing "Hallelujah" at random times.  We sang a couple of different songs with Hallelujahs or Alleluias - but he remembers!  Our church really teaches kids about Christ and His love for us, we're so thankful for that.  We had a beautiful, moving drama during the Easter service that was unforgettable...though a little scary for Connor as it portrayed the crucifixion, he made it through with his aunts and uncle right there and I am glad that he will know (at a young age) about Christ's sacrifice for us...and that He rose again!!!

After church we had a flurry of lunch (leftovers!), packing the car, and opening baskets that a few bunnies had sent to the kids!  The kids and I then began our drive to FL for vacation, Laura headed back to school for a few days (before she joined us) and everyone else crashed to nap for a few hours.  What a wonderful weekend!