happy easter!

we had a pretty quiet easter planned.  we did not do as many easter crafts this year but the kids were pretty happy just playing together and chose not to do the ones i had planned.  and that was just fine.

we went kind of light on the easter baskets too.  here are pictures of each one, can you guess who they belong to?

the surprise hit of the baskets?  individual tissue packs!  i picked up an 8-packs of 'cars' and disney princesses from the dollar store and gave them each one pack.  they each couldn't wait to get them open  and try one.  they even asked to take their tissues to church with them.  who knew?

church was great.  madelyn doesn't care for the large k-2 service each week so she really wasn't excited about the larger k-5 service they had today and stayed with us.  it was fine.  she enjoyed reading the screen projections during the message.  

after church i did think to take a picture of all of us dressed up before getting into making brunch.  i had to lean the camera on a screwdriver to get the angle from the kitchen counter right, but it did the job.  i think the beeping and blinking light for the countdown helped get all of the kids to look at the camera.

after we got the oven going, we let the kids go downstairs to hunt for eggs.  i had hidden 36 (because that was how many pieces of candy i happened to have) and it worked out perfect for them each to find 12.  i think we will do messages or color coordinate the eggs next year, but we will see what i am feeling when easter rolls around.

while matt and i made eggs, bacon and tater tots the kids each got to have one of their candies - they all picked the large box of lemon drop candies because it had the 'most'.

at the last minute, i thought to make "jesus biscuits" with the kids to have with brunch.  i got the idea from my friend, kellie, and thought we would give it a try.  i recommend it and we will be doing it every year.  you just take a marshmallow, brush it with oil, cover it with sugar and cinnamon (like they would have readied jesus' body with oil and spices) and then wrap it in a biscuit (again, like preparing jesus for burial they wrapped his body and put it in the tomb).  then you bake them according to the instructions on the package.

and then when you take them out, the marshmallows will have melted and the 'tomb' will be empty inside.  the kids thought this was pretty great and the biscuits were super yummy - sort of like cinnamon rolls.

when we had cleaned up from brunch we finally got around to dying our easter eggs.  i had hard boiled them a few days ago but we had never made the time to dye them.  this year we used kool-ade to dye them, and again, i would recommend it.  just mix a package of kool-ade with 2/3 cup of water.  not only does it smell good but the kids just licked their fingers when they splashed a little.  

we used brown eggs and were still happy with the results.  we dyed every egg we had - hard boiled and raw.

we had a very nice easter and got some relaxing in too.  the kids played with their eggs and baskets the rest of the day, matt did some deep cleaning in our room (i gave him a hard time because he got to watch basketball the whole time that way) and i worked on setting up our new computer (thanks, tax refund) and getting the calendar all filled in with all the school dates for the rest of the year.

easter is such a happy time celebrating God's perfect gift to us all and the forgiveness of our sins.  love.