Easter!

Hooray for Easter, my favorite holiday! This Easter seemed particularly joyful because, after the longest winter ever, it finally felt like Spring. It was warm and sunny and beautiful. With General Conference the weekend before, and then a week of cleaning and preparation during Holy Week, Easter served as the culmination. Hallelujah; Christ is risen!

Here is Jesus preaching to the bunnies during Holy Week. Look how they love Him! He's going to heal that bunny with the broken ear, I think!

We did something new this year. A couple weeks before Easter, we had a Family Home Evening where we chose names of Christ to draw or write. It was so much fun! We all enjoyed it so much that we made multiple names and kept making them for the next few days! (Well…all of us except Malachi and Seb…but at least they did one each, ha ha). We hung all of our names up on the wall and they reminded us of Jesus and our love for Him all week long. So far, we can't bear to take them down!

The morning after we got our names of Christ hung on the wall, I discovered another one had been carefully written and added by Ziggy. I love it so much!!!

Here's another of Ziggy's masterpieces. He's got "King of Kings" up there, accented by a nativity scene in the bottom left (note the three kings kneeling with their gifts…is one gift a pencil?), Easter scenes in the top left and middle right, and some police cars and a police…bunny?…for good measure.

I've had these bunny decorations for a few years now, and this year I was happy to run into a BIG one on eBay! I snatched him up, of course. I had to put him next to all the other bunnies just for the sake of comparison—

but he really resides up here most of the time.

He is very big!

On Easter morning we made our usual Empty Tomb rolls.

Does Junie HAVE an empty tomb…

…or IS she an empty tomb??

The girls looked so cute in their flowery dresses! Gussie sneaked into this picture too.

Clementine was a little put out about being made to stay in one place rather than wander around the yard as she would have liked.

She has such a funny glare these days! She's not truly MAD. Just thoughtful and a little…skeptical? 

Giving the porch bunny a kiss

Waving and yelling "BYEEEEEE" (as that's what one does on the porch!)

Cute Easter boys

The girls all helped set the table, and Daisy and Junie folded the bunny napkins.

Each had one of our little marble eggs inside! So cute.

Bunnies everywhere!

For dinner, we had a sort of Mediterranean meal, with homemade hummus and feta dip and tzatziki and roasted tomatoes and greens. We made SO MUCH pita bread, since that is the key ingredient of a meal like this! It does my heart good to see stacks piled up like this. I have a horror of not having enough for everyone to eat all they want!

We were able to cook it all much faster than usual due to Sam's brilliant idea of using the electric griddle as well as the skillet. Teddy was so pleased to be able to help cook! He did a great job, too.

More piles of pita (or rather, the same piles, in a different spot. Sorry. I just find them so pleasing to look at.)

Note the bunny in the hummus (Goldie's work)

Roasted tomatoes with burrata. SO GOOD.

And lemon bars for dessert!

Here are the marble eggs, gathered together in their basket again

After dinner we had the traditional egg hunt in the backyard. Here we see a good example of the girls looking high and looking low, as always instructed to.

A policeman supervising Clementine (who really should not be on that ladder)

Sarah with baby Jacob! My new grand-nephew. He is the sweetest.

Snugglers!

Here's that intense glare again.

Ziggy peeking out

Gus and Caw on the hunt

Malachi looking handsome and disapproving

Junie atop the swingset

Gus doing lots of things with Caw

Cutie Goldie

Radiant Junie standing in a ray of sunlight

Lifting the couches to hunt for eggs—Malachi and Mark were the hiders for this round, and it was so hard! They stopped at nothing.

There was one green egg we just could NOT find. Mark and Malachi refused to give any hints, but kept saying darkly that it might be broken…it was quite likely to be broken, in fact. They laughed to each other in a sinister way when they said it. (These were regular hard boiled eggs we were using, and several already had broken, falling from their perches in trees or being dropped while running back to the basket with them.) We searched and searched and searched. Then finally, as Gus was about to go inside, suddenly there was a green egg next to him on the porch! We were quite sure it had NOT been there before. It was such a mystery! We finally got the conspirators to reveal that the egg had been hidden INSIDE OF CAW!

!!!!!!!!!

As you can see from all the pictures, Caw had been QUITE active in the egg hunt with Gussie, and it's a miracle the egg wasn't completely pulverized.

Mark and Malachi were SO pleased with themselves. Quite insufferable, really.

Nutmeg came out to join the festivities, of course. He has an inborn wariness of hawks (or something), so he likes to hide in corners sometimes, but he hopped around a bit and added to the general merriment.

Glare!

Caw, having a bit of a rest after an eventful afternoon

Policeman giving Sarah a ticket? Not sure why.

Darling Daisy

Sarah valiantly assisting Clementine AND Gus, who both wanted her, of course

Goldie and Grandma

Our eggs, slightly the worse for wear (one blue and one yellow had been completely ruined by this point)

I like how as the egg dye faded or got absorbed or whatever happens to it overnight (what DOES happen?), it made this egg look like a starry night sky, full of galaxies.

Babies being doted on

Enjoying the last of the light

Cloth egg memory game

Clementine IS an egg

Clementine kisses Jacob

I'll end with these pictures of my cute girls and my mom (with Sam making the best of things in the background)

(Poor headless Sam, probably still making the best of things back there)

It was a happy day! Christ is risen indeed!