Easter

Easter morning dawned clear and beautiful here in Las Vegas. It was a relaxing morning for our family. We typically do whole wheat pancakes for Sunday breakfast, but since we had had those the day before when Joel was with us, I made a skillet breakfast with sausage, hashbrowns, red peppers, scrambled eggs, and cheese. Ted cut a canteloupe to go with it, and it was nice that we could all sit down for breakfast at the same time. (Pancakes are usually eaten in shifts!) Instead of Easter baskets stuffed full of, well, STUFF, we chose to pick one gift for each of the older kids from the church bookstore. Tobin had been asking for a devotional book similar to what Charis and Arden had received on their birthday last fall, so we got him an appropriate one and he was thrilled. Arden got "Benjamin's Box," a cute story that goes along with the Resurrection Eggs from Family Life. Charis' book wasn't necessarily "spiritual," but it was written by "Mr. Rory," the man who directed the children's Christmas drama, and she was ecstatic upon receiving it. In fact, she had it read by the end of the day!

We had invited our new neighbors to go to the service with us. Unfortunately, the whole family didn't end up going, but Mikaela did come along with us. She was so excited that she rang the doorbell at 2 minutes past 9:00! (We had told her mom we'd be ready around 9:20.) She had been so happy that her mom took her shopping for a new dress, and she and Charis were thrilled to be all dressed up. The boys picked out their own Easter outfits, as you can probably tell...I was more concerned about getting us girls dressed and figured that the boys didn't really care as much about dressing up on Easter Sunday anyway! Kenna looked adorable in her little dress from Mrs. J, though she was not very happy that morning, for some reason.

The service was very good, and wow, did we have a full house! Our church has expanded the back of the auditorium so it can seat about 1,000 people at a time, and Easter Sunday was the first time that people were able to sit back there. We had nearly every seat filled for the service we attended as well as the one afterward! It will be interesting to see how many people came to all 5 services. This week we'll be dropping a service since the auditorium expansion is finished.

After the service Charis was baptized, and then Ted took the kiddos home while I stayed to serve during my regular serving time. We had a full house in the pre-school building, too! After that I got to see my friends' daughter baptized, and then I headed home, where I smelled wonderful aromas wafting from the kitchen. I had written out a "timeline" for what needed to happen for our dinner, and Ted had everything all ready for us when I got home! What a wonderful man!

The F family came over and joined us for our yummy dinner of ham, sweet potato casserole, cheesy hashbrown casserole, green bean supreme (one of their contributions), curried deviled eggs, and pistachio salad. Later on we had some strawberry cake that Heather had brought. The kids played well together and watched the Veggie Tales Easter movie and (later on) the Enchanted movie we had rented, and we adults played TWO games of Catan!! Woohoo!

For more Easter pictures, go here. You can see Kenna looking happier later that day as well as the pics of us decorating eggs and the kids having their egg hunt (with empty plastic eggs!) in the backyard.