Easter Greetings

Happy Easter! This is really my favorite day of the year. Ever since I spent Easter in Jerusalem in 1996, I can't celebrate Easter the same. It is real. I feel grief on Good Friday, I feel joy on Easter and I feel so GRATEFUL for my Savior.

This year the Easter Bunny brought me these three shiny Easter Eggs. I couldn't ask for anything sweeter.
Josh gave a great Family Home Evening lesson on the atonement last Monday which the boys really understood. I am so grateful for him and his love of the gospel and his involvement with our children.
Here's Sam with his bed-hair. He was the first to discover the baskets and had to go wake up Michael. The Easter Bunny had hidden more eggs around the house, which they found a little more easily than they did last year! They're getting so big!


We had the missionaries join us for dinner right after church which meant I had to make everything, including the pork roast, ahead of time. I reheated it when I got home and it was great. We ate two dozen rolls. The boys and I each had two so you do the math for how many that left for Josh and the two missionaries!


I had my first day in my new calling at church helping in the nursery. It's a big change from teaching Relief Society, but it's going to be sweet. The night before church I was bemoaning how big Sam's hands are getting. Flash forward to nursery the next day when I had the job of helping 16 little ones use hand sanitizing gel before snack time! I was in baby-hand heaven. A handsome two year old boy in a pin stripe suit took a fancy to me and led me around by the hand. It was a great day. When Anna is 18 months in the fall, she'll be in there with me and I'll get to help her make some little friends. It's actually very exciting! So, this is me with my sugar-high from the Easter cake, and the joy that He Is Risen and the feel of tiny hands in mine. Quite a day!

Also, here's Anna in her girly-girl clothes from Grandma and Grandpa. She has discovered her shiny church shoes and asks to wear them all the time.

Here she is in her skirt, pretty shoes, talking on the phone and playing with a measuring spoon and cup. I could eat her up!
She calls me Mom-mom, asks for Da-da all the time, and calls herself "Nana." Baby Nana is so fun to say it might just stick.

Then, today, Josh took the day off work and we drove 100 miles to see the BEACH!

We build a small, lame sandcastle and had fun watching the waves carry most of it out to sea. Michael raced right down to the water and put his feet in.
The boys dug in the sand and drew in it with sticks.

As I came around the corner with Anna in my arms, the ocean came into view. She pointed to it and excitedly said/ asked "That!?" She giggled and wiggled the whole time. I didn't think we'd stay two hours and I didn't think about the sun and she has a tiny sunburn but I'm sure it will be gone by morning.