Easter Weekend

I love Easter because it's the promise of spring! This has been a weird winter with cold, icky weather, snow days that didn't amount to anything (from a teacher's perspective!) and tornadoes on top of that!

This weekend was absolutely picture perfect which makes the true reason for Easter even more exciting. Seeing the trees blossom and the flowers bloom bring a joy to me that reminds me of the tremendous love Jesus has for us. A love that literally took Him to hell and back for me.

He has literally spoiled me with blessing after blessing. One of those blessings being my family. I've always loved my family. Ya know, in that "I have to love 'em" kinda way." But as I've gotten older, I appreciate them more. Especially as our family gets bigger!

This weekend was so much fun as we celebrated Easter together. We actually celebrated on Saturday which was kinda nice because it was very laid back. No one was rushing after church.

As I pulled into my parent's house, it was a picture perfect scene. The sun was beaming! Mandi, mom, and my grandparents were sitting in lawn chairs under the big sprawling tree in the front yard. Evan was hitting baseballs with his tee ball set. When he recognized my car, he started running towards me. His little 2 year old body bouncing toward me with a smile that took up his whole face. My heart melted!

Once the rest of the clan got there, we all sat down to lunch. Which was a bit of a challenge since the kids wanted to tear into their easter baskets first! Lunch was a smorgasboard of ham, roast, broccoli casserole (a Brown gathering staple), green beans, potato salad, slaw salad, mac and cheese for the kids and deviled eggs. Delish!

Then it was time for the easter egg hunt! I've nominated myself as the easter egg hunt planner. I had this hunt planned since the beginning of March. I knew the kids would get so much candy, so I wanted to do something that didn't involve candy in every egg. As creative as this is, I can't take credit for it. I ran across it online somewhere.

Each kid was assigned egg colors and they could ONLY pick up their egg color. Inside the eggs were puzzle pieces. I lined all the kids up and sent them on their way:






One group shot after they found all their eggs:

Bo had his own eggs to find. No puzzles in them...just "Little People" toys.
Once they found all their eggs, they would go inside to see the box of their puzzle and begin working:

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The puzzles were a hit! Evan got his together first and went around to every single person showing off his achievement:

Blake and Brooke's took a little longer. They did such a good job!





Then the kids were dying to get into their easter gifts. The big hit were the bubble guns from Nana-Gamma and Papa Tom.





Here's some random shots throughout the day:






Today, I went to my old church. Here's what I ended up wearing after a last ditch effort at the mall last night. WARNING: vain pictures ahead!!


Hope you had a great day, too!