Happy Easter!

HE IS RISEN!! What an awesome time we had this year celebrating the resurrection of our Savior Jesus. I find myself so grateful and in awe for the death that He died for us on the cross, and even more grateful for Him rising from the grave 3 days later, to conquer death for us all! How He loves us.

Some great Bible verses:

"I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die." John 11:25-26

"But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him." Acts 2:24

"This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us."

1 John 3:16

"In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade."
1 Peter 1:3-4

The day before Easter, we had a great time having some of our friends over for an Easter egg hunt and dinner. Rachel and Nick have two sons, Dominick, 10, and Simon, 2. And Valerie came with her beautiful little 7 month old girl Kendall.

The day before, I dyed some eggs for the kids to decorate (I think Noah and Simon are still a little young for this part...). But they had fun coloring them and decorating them with stickers!

"Hidden" egg :-)

Noah and Simon in a field of plastic eggs. :-)

Simon taking a break to dig into some of his candy!

Kendall helped by giving Noah an egg.

We couldn't stop these kids from digging into their candy!

Andy's family has had a tradition on Easter morning of leaving a trail of candy to find their Easter baskets. In my family, our baskets were always hidden and we would have to go find them. We decided to forego the candy trail this year, only because we knew it would lead to Noah having a belly full of candy before his breakfast, but we might start that tradition up next year!After we gave Noah his basket and we ate breakfast, we went to church and then the annual Easter breakfast after the service. Then the children's ministry put on some Easter crafts and a big Easter egg hunt for the kids. Noah had a lot of fun decorating a cross, an egg carton, and collecting more eggs!

Noah's Easter basket!

Family portrait by the cross of flowers outside our church.

Mommy helping Noah decorate a foam cross.

Silly pose...after Andy snapped like 20 pictures of us working on the cross.

After church, our plan was to come home, get Noah down for his nap, and get the house and appetizers ready for everyone to come over for dinner. All of these things happened except for the nap...can we say sugar high?? Noah was not about to take a nap, so it made for an interesting afternoon, but he did pretty good. Our friends Hannah and Isaac and their 2 kids came over, along with Andy's family and my family. We had a great time!

Appetizers, mmm...:-)

Table #1

Table #2 (flowers from my mom's yard!)

Fireplace with new Partylite purchase in the fireplace, I love candles! :-)

Outside enjoying the sun that finally came out before dinner!

My mom getting ready to eat some yummy dinner!

All the goodies: honeybaked ham with champagne mustard, homemade dinner rolls (by my Grandma), spinach/strawberry/asparagus salad, scalloped potatoes, jello salad and potato salad!

The "adult" table :-)

And the crazy toddler table (speaking of my own anyway) :-) Noah has become quite a handful at the dinner table the last couple of weeks, so we decided we'd split it up a little bit. Although, he did pretty good and ate most of his plate!

And this is what Grandma decided to do after dinner, fill Noah's mouth with whipped cream!

He wasn't complaining, it was pretty funny :-)

Homemade strawberry shortcake for dessert made by my mom, it was so good!

Greg getting ready to dig in!

We hope you all had a wonderful Easter weekend celebrating with family and friends!