Easter Bundting

I don't know what happened this year- seriously!  I'm busy, but just at normal levels of " Spring busy."  I just never got out the decorations for Easter or did a reading with the children or got the Easter eggs dyed.  Easter Eve we went downstair, after tucking the children all into bed, and had to find the Easter baskets to fill.  I had bought candy and new Sunday outfits, at least!

The sacrificial bunny!  Everyone gets a Cadbury Chocolate bunny in their baskets and we eat them one at a time, cut into pieces.  Those things are over 800 calories a piece!

Rob stopped getting new clothes, because he is extremely picky and he refuses to shop.  I can not, for the life of me, get that man out of his 80's and early 90's clothes.  Therefore, I ignored him when I shopped. 

Trying to get a picture of all the new Easter outfits was not an easy job, either. 

Now that Sam is a deacon, his clothing are boring beyond belief.  He got a new tie, another white shirt and pair of Khakis.

He was not impressed.  He never has been- with Sunday clothes.  When he was little he used to spit on them and tell me they were too wet to wear.  He tried everything to get out of those clothes.  Now he just takes them off as soon as possible.  

Emma's dress I had to find on line. 

You just can't find a decent Junior's dress out there.  You can't find a decent Women's dress out there any more either.  It's like the whole world decided that dresses were stupid and they were no longer going to wear them.  I don't mind wearing skirts and blouses, but I like dresses every now and again.  Emma's dress is from Down East Basics, mine from Shabby Apple.

That is a really bad picture, but Rob would only take one!

 Both of them are Utah based companies.  

We had a quick bite of chocolate early in the morning and then headed to church.

I enjoyed Sacrament meeting, but in Young Women's they did a lot on the death of the Savior.  You should have heard the song that was performed at the end.  It was morbid!  They lightly touched on the suffering in the garden, but never mentioned the Resurrection.  It left me... not happy.  I mean there is a reason we don't wear crosses like our other Christian brothers and sisters!  We believe that the most important parts were the sacrifice in the garden and the Resurrection.  True, he couldn't have been resurrected if he didn't give up his life.  Anyway, I just feel like it ends up being a let's make everyone cry session instead of a let's wonder about the condescension of God and his miraculous gift to each of us lesson- which makes me dread Easter more often than not.

After we got home, we made the dinner (yep didn't even make rolls before hand, this year!) and everyone colored an egg. 

After dinner, we decided we needed some fun, though, so we called a couple friends to come over and we did a flashlight Easter Egg hunt. 

We staggered the start, so that the little kids got to go out ahead.  We went from youngest to oldest and made them wait 15-20 seconds between each- Ok, by the time we got to Samuel, we really didn't make them wait that long, because Sam is super speedy!  Look what we found while we were hiding eggs

- a real nest with robin eggs!

They looked so fake!

I couldn't remember what we traditionally had for dessert on Easter.  Is there even an Easter dessert tradition?  I don't know.  So we decided to make one.  Behold- Easter cake! 

It is strawberry bundt cake with lemon icing and strawberries all around it.  It was yummy!

I think everyone had a great time- we just didn't get rid of enough chocolate.  Next time, we need more friends!

The Lame Mother excuse Blog

With our big trip to Rome, the start of track and normal living, it was hard to do everything we usually do for Easter.  The commissary and Bx ran out of Easter candy along time ago and never reordered.  I had grabbed a bunch of little peanut butter eggs when I saw them, but Joseph slowly ate those away, until I only had one bag left.  I re-hid those, but he found them before Easter as well.  Hence, Joseph got zero peanut butter eggs.  The rest of those that were left were split between the rest of us.  They don't do peanut butter in Europe still.  In fact that and Root beer is what you give a German to say thank you.  When they came to the American school as part of an exchange program, they all went out and got American money and insisted on going to Taco Bell and then over to the shoppette to get peanut butter cups.  Emma said it was really funny to see them all showing off their foreign money and getting all excited about Taco bell and peanut butter cups!
In the end we had to drive on Saturday, after the base Easter Egg hunt

(Friday was Good Friday and so everything was closed!) to the Real and picking up a bunch of yummy Germany Easter candy- which all happened to be made by Lindt!  I didn't get anything else, but had enough stuff in my "birthday box" to give the kids a little gift, also- a flying helicopter for all the boys (but we are out of batteries, whoops!) and some light up balloons for Emma (along with a shirt that she found that I liked and so stole from her!)

I didn't have time to make rolls, by the time we got home, so we didn't have our traditional cinnamon rolls for breakfast.  We made do with some good German bread for dinner.  Forgot about a jello salad, too!  We also never colored the eggs, but I needed them to make deviled eggs.  Oh well.  The dinner turned out fine, though and then we had a nice long walk.

 By the time we made it home it was past 8 pm and we needed to get everyone to bed.  No coloring of Easter eggs happened!  There was one bright spot.  We have been watching conference talks for our scripture reading lately and the one we were on, just happened to be about Jesus and the atonement.  It capped the day off nicely.
No one seemed too put out about the lack of Easter traditions happening, except the coloring of eggs.  We have the missionaries over tonight, so maybe we will do that with them.  Max said, "but it's after Easter, now."  Hey, we are making our own rules here, so we can color eggs whenever we want!

Not Quite so messy of an Easter

For me Easter is about new church clothes. OK, I know. It is really about our Saviour and the price he paid for us, but you can't hear about that in your old church clothes according to my twisted mind. My husband reminded me that last year he decided to make Easter breakfast and then he was ridiculed for quite awhile afterwards when the DD decided to spill grape juice all over her new Easter dress. This year we decided to have cereal- something we rarely do, and some white grape juice. Emma came down in street clothes and the boys were not allowed to wear their Easter shirts until they were done. Of course we had to have at least one mishap. Samuel didn't think that hot chocolate drinking was part of the being done requirement to putting on his shirt. Needless to say, we did a little quick washing before church.

I forgot to get a picture, before half of us were out of our Easter outfits, so only the boys are in the "Family Easter Photo." We will get a belated one next week.

After church (where I was released from my calling in the Primary Presidency- and that is a whole new set of ramblings for another time) we came home and then went to a friends for a BBQ and an egg hunt. The kids all had a great time!

Our kind of Easter

Ah Easter- the time to color beautiful eggs, get dressed up in your new outfits for church, frolic while hunting carefully hidden eggs, and eat the ears off of unsuspecting chocolate bunnies! Is there anything better- well if only it was a reality!
Our eggs were camouflaged and had pictures of dinosaurs eating Emma or large flowers stepping on Joseph drawn on them. Mine was one of the only normal ones. (I wrapped it in lace before coloring it.)
As for new outfits- I had to shoot just the top halves of them, because they were too silly to stay still and ended up putting grass stains on themselves when they ended up like this! Even Robert ran upstairs and got changed before I could get a picture with him- stinker!
The eggs for the church were not carefully hidden- I know, because I was the supervisor of all those teenagers who were doing the hiding- more like flinging the eggs! And there was very little frolicking, since the eggs were scooped up so fast, there were almost none left, by the time my kids got outside. (despite the fact they were told they could only have 10 a piece!) The kids had fun posing for pictures, anyway! Luckily, we made up for the lack of egg finding, at home. Sunday after a good dinner of ham and potatoes we had a flashlight Easter egg hunt downstairs. It's been raining for days, so outside was a no go. The flashlight egg hunt went over well, though!
Easter morning is always fun when you get to eat straight sugar for breakfast! Rob decided the boys just had to have golf clubs their size so they could hit with him downstairs. They loved that. I also got them Risk, because they had been asking for it. Rob was really happy about that, since he had to spend the morning showing them how to play the game!! Emma got a gift certificate to Claires.
It was a nice Easter, with a great message in the end. We were so busy, with soccer games and my working full-time, that we didn't get much in about Christ. I felt terrible about it. These are the days I am thankful for great teachers at church. Max came home with a drawing of Christ in the sky and told me all about it. Next year we will do better, because although we'll never have the poster Easter experience, I really do want to teach my children what it's really all about!