Happy Easter!

I love Easter. It's such a great holiday. When I was young, my mom would always make me a new dress for Easter. We loved coloring and hunting for eggs. I'll never forget the year we didn't find one of our boiled eggs for several months. It was in my brother's dump truck. 

Before I was married, I used to fly to Utah or Las Vegas to decorate eggs with my nieces and nephews. Easter is even more fun now that I can celebrate it with my children. Our Easter celebration started a week ago with a Primary party at church.

There was a blindfolded egg hunt.

Cookie decorating.

Pin the tail on the bunny.

And the hokey pokey. It was a lot of fun.

Yesterday we colored our eggs. Due to a scientific experiment by my nephew Cameron, we learned that egg dye actually does the best job of coloring, so we used that method.

We loved that it was such a beautiful day, we could decorate outside.

We were surprised to see that several of our eggs came out of the dye with a ring on them. We have no idea how that happened, but it looked really cool.

Jalen was inspired by Picasso's blue period and colored all his eggs in shades of that color.

Later he recolored all his eggs until they were varying shades of brown due to being dunked in several different shades of color.

Baylie emulated her daddy and tried to make her eggs fancy.

David takes great pride in his egg decorating skills. 

In fact, the rest of us had colored all our eggs, played with the baking soda (see below) and eaten lunch before David was finished coloring his eggs.

David's eggs.

Other eggs (guess which one is actually David's).

Last year we discovered a fun activity to do with the leftover dye. You use eye droppers to drop egg dye into a pan of baking soda. It bubbles up and makes great designs. The kids love to do it.

Later in the day, we joined forces with our awesome neighbors the Houle's for our egg hunt. I forgot to take a single picture of the hunt. Mom fail! But here are some pictures of happy kids with their baskets.

I know I'm her mom, but could she be any more beautiful??

I don't make my kids their Easter outfits, but I do try and dress them up special. Thanks to Halo Heaven, Jalen and Baylie were adorable today. (Jalen liked his hat much more than Baylie liked hers.)

While I'd rather go to my mom's house and let her do all the cooking, I'm grateful that she has taught me how to cook a special dinner. I was really tempted to use instant potatoes and sweet potatoes along with frozen rolls, but thanks to my mom, I just couldn't do it.

Easter dinner with David's friend and classmate Bill.

And while it's not the focus of this particular blog post, I do want to testify that the reason we celebrate this special day is to remember the resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. My testimony of Him and His atonement is strong and unwaivering. There are many things that cause me frustration, but Christ is the one thing that always keeps me centered. We have spent a lot of time this holiday trying to help our children learn why we really celebrate Easter. (If you read the funnies at right, you'll see that Baylie seems to be grasping it a little better than Jalen.)