Whew! I am still trying to recover from Easter this year! Big Strong Man and I were so happy to have all four kids together this year and to be able to celebrate our risen Saviour in true smorgasbord style!

This year, we decided to celebrate all weekend long. Big Strong Man was off from work on Good Friday, so our friend came over with her twin babies and we all watched The Passion for the first time. BooBoo was napping through most of it, but when she did wake up, we set her up with a Disney movie in the game room. However, three babies to entertain made watching the movie somewhat difficult, although we all agreed that having a little distraction was not such a bad thing in this particular situation.

Later that night, we ate a family favorite meal, Ritz chicken and rice, and then we watched a kid-friendly cartoon version of the Easter story. We know that children have a tendency to gravitate towards a focus on candy and gifts, so we wanted to make sure that we started off the celebrations with a point on the right direction. Poor BooBoo was sad that Jesus had to die, but she was overjoyed that he's alive. We taught her to respond, "He is risen, indeed!" and she walked around saying that all weekend!

Saturday morning was a little rushed as we herded our family of six into the car for the Easter Eggstravaganza at church. We ended up making it with a few minutes to spare before Truck's very first Easter egg hunt. Well, he didn't end up hunting very much. Even though he can crawl, he was more than happy to just sit in the middle of all the eggs and bang two of them together. Luckily, he has three older sisters who were happy to help him gather some eggs for his basket.

BooBoo was definitely more interested in hunting eggs than Truck, although she did need a little encouragement to get going. She was just adorable: every time she saw another egg, her little face lit up with delight. After finding about a dozen eggs, she announced that she had found enough and was ready to go play with her friends in the bounce house. She even went down the big slide!



Hermione and Polly were supposed to participate in a scavenger egg hunt, but Polly quickly abandoned it in favor of climbing the rock wall. We were a little surprised that our dainty princess would take to rock climbing so well, but she climbed until we left. After many turns, Polly even agreed to rappel down, under the condition that I get a picture of it.



Hermione ran off with a friend to get her face painted, but wound up waiting in line until we had to leave. She was a little disappointed, but seemed happy to have spent some quality time with a good friend.

After the Eggstravaganza, we headed home to dye our Easter eggs, which I of course forgot to capture on camera. We also made rice "krippy" treats and I tried to get ahead on the next day's cooking by baking a hummingbird cake.

Sunday morning finally rolled around, and we had a little egg hunt of our own. We had specific eggs for each child so that they could easily distinguish their own eggs. BooBoo quickly found all of her pastel eggs, and was then pointing out Hermione's soccer eggs and Polly's purple camouflage eggs to them. We must have done a really good job hiding the eggs because we had to give hints to the older girls!

After breakfast, we dressed up in mostly new outfits and headed to church. BooBoo walked in the door and announced, "He is risen indeed!" So precious! Hermione helped out in BooBoo's classroom, and Polly worshipped with her friends. Pastor shared an amazing message, and the presence of our Lord was thick in the sanctuary.

We decided to start a new tradition of an Easter lunch. Inspired by a friend, I created a muffin tin lunch with an Easter theme. We had dyed Easter eggs, graham bunnies, chick crackers, marshmallows, mandarin oranges, pineapple, and deli turkey rolls. The kids absolutely loved it, and I think it is worth repeating next year.



That evening, we shared a more traditional Easter dinner. We praised God for His most wonderful gift to us, and we celebrated His love for us. It was a great Easter: our family was so close, and we were all a little sad to see the weekend end. We are so blessed as a family!