Saturday, April 30, 2011

Quite an Eggcellent Easter!

Guess what!
We got spring like weather just in time to celebrate Easter!!!
And celebrate is just what we did!
Seriously, I think Easter might just be my favorite holiday. Oh, I love Christmas and celebrating the birth of Jesus, no doubt about it. But celebrating the culmination of what He came to do for us by defeating death, hell and the grave on Easter just gives me so much JOY!!!
So, take a look at some of the ways we celebrated this year....
Of course we had to start with dyeing Easter eggs!

Yes, we tied Ryne down in the high chair for this event. I'm sure you can't imagine why we would do that. ha!

Waiting patiently for the dye to do it's work.

Then we took turns blowing on the dyed eggs so they would dry and could be decorated.

Kade's turn!

Paint! Another reason for having Ryne tied down in the high chair.

Kade liked the paint, too.

Little artist.

Ryne also really like putting on stickers.
He would put about 12 stickers in one single spot on an egg.

And more paint!

Kade made this cool polka dot egg.

One of my favorites!

The finished products!
The boys had lots of fun decorating eggs this year. And I must admit I had a good time helping them out.

The next Easter celebration.....Our city Egg Hunt!

My boys headed to the park for the big hunt.
I have to tell you that it was an absolutely perfect day!!
Could not have asked for a more beautiful day.

Kade and Ryne were happy to just be outside and free to run around a bit.

Doesn't that just look like a kid doing his "happy dance"????

Kade with his friend Aubrey waiting for their turn to egg hunt.
Kade and Ryne were in different age groups and Ryne's group was scheduled to go first.

Kyle holding on to Ryne so that he didn't enter the hunting area before someone said "go."

Found one!

And another one!

Is that one I see there?

Now, just take a look at how many people are there hunting eggs just with the 0-3 age group.
It was seriously crazy the amount of people and kids. I think the eggs were all gone within 2 1/2 minutes. No. Kidding.

But Ryne did manage to find a few of those eggs.
I think he actually ended up with six eggs in his basket.

Kade went over to his egg hunting spot with his friends John and Aubrey.
When we finished with Ryne we went over to meet them and found Aubrey was entertaining everyone.

Silly girl!
Then it was countdown time.
10...9...8........4...3....2....1....

And they're off!

To the races it would seem!

Looks like maybe Kade found an egg.

And then he was lost in the crowd!
Parents were not allowed to help with the 4-6 year olds.
But they managed to scoop up all the eggs in less time than it took Ryne's group.

Ryne found out there was chocolate in one of his eggs and decided to just indulge a bit while he waited for Kade.

Can you tell there were tears??
Well, poor guy only found four eggs and he was devastated!

That is until he found out his friend Aubrey only had two eggs in her basket.
So he decided he could give Aubrey one of his eggs and then they would both have three!
Meltdown avoided. Whew, that was a close one.

Kade sat in the bleachers for a minute surveying all the egg hunters checking out their finds. Then we told them since it was such a nice day we could stay and play at the playground for a bit. They quickly made their way to the playground!!
To climb....



And swing...



And slide...


And swing some more...

My favorite pic of the day!
I took this right after Kade said, "I'll help you push Ryne, Daddy."
Ha!

Kade even got to swing with his friend Aubrey.

Daddy played some too....

Don't worry, he didn't hog the roundy-roundy thing...

Ryne got a turn, too.


Three little monkeys!

Aubrey didn't stick around too long with these crazy boys.
Smart girl!


More climbing!

And some spinning! See Kade hanging on for dear life?

When we told the boys we needed to head for home, wouldn't you know they would spot a location that they just HAD to check out before we left...

I almost think they had as much fun playing on these old downed trees as they did the playground.

Kade served us up some "salad."

And there was lots of climbing to be done.


I wanted to get a picture of all three of my handsome guys together on the tree.
But...

Well, you know how well my boys like to cooperate for posed pictures.
What was I thinking?

Of course, they'd rather be climbing than posing. They are little boys, right?!

At least I got one of my boys to pose for me!

Good thing I like action shots...


And we did finally get them home for lunch. And since it was such a perfect day, you know what we had to do....eat outside! That is one of our favorite things to do, have meals on our back patio. And this was the first time we were able to do that this year. Sorry, I didn't take any pictures. We were quite hungry after a morning of egg hunting and playing!

Next form of Easter celebrating...

Easter Egg Baskets full of goodies!

Kade's Easter surprises!

Ryne's Easter surprises!

Of course, I couldn't leave Kyle out.
He deserves Easter goodies, too!
Plus, Kyle having goodies gave me good reason to leave these...

out for me!!!
Oh, I do love some Cadbury Creme Eggs!!!

And then came Easter morning...

I think Kade is pleased!

Ryne had to investigate a bit more before he knew whether to be pleased or not.

Yep, he's happy!
There was a Superman in one of his eggs!

And a Batman for Kade!

A new water bottle for Kade with a cool flip top lid.
He now takes it everywhere with him.


Lizard!

Oh, Kade has a lizard, too!

A new game for the Leapster Explorer.
A do think we had a couple of happy boys on our hands!


I think Kyle was a happy boy, too!
Just to know he wasn't forgotten in the dishing out of Easter surprises.

Then the most exciting part of Easter!
Church time!
Got our church clothes on....

Got the lizards....

Headed to Tumwater for
Sound City Church!!

This is the church that our friends Russell, Belinda and Mollie came to start.
Easter morning was their very first church service and it was so cool to get to be there!

After church we went to lunch with Derek and Alissa.
Had a chance to grab a quick family Easter pic...

Not too bad, even if Kade isn't looking at the camera and it is quite obvious that Ryne is saying "cheese." I even managed to hide Tesa and Tyce quite well. Ha!

Of course, our boys thought it was quite a treat getting to have Easter lunch with D and Lissa.

Ryne kept D busy.

While Kade did his best to keep Lissa busy.
What a nice lunch Kyle and I had!
We really like spending time with D and Lissa too, and not just because they are good at looking after our boys. That's just an added bonus for us!

After lunch we picked up a baptistry...you'll see what we needed that for later.....and headed back home to get prepped for Life Church.
It was an awesome night!

We had some artwork that our friend LeHua had done.

It was really cool all on display heading into church.

Everyone was ready and excited for the night.

Here is Alissa ready to check in kiddos.
Now, who wouldn't want to leave their children at Life Kids with that smiling face greeting them?


Here is the Argyle Sweat Club that showed up to get Life Babies off to a good start.
Aren't they so cute?

This guy thinks he is cool hanging out in Life Kids.


Sweet Aurelia waiting for things to get started.

I even managed to get this man of mine to stop for a quick pic....

Look at us being all color coordinated. Awww!


The Jennys hanging out with kids before we got started.


Jonathan and Adri ready to greet everybody as they come in the front door.


Our worship team did a great job!
Derek is greeting everyone here and he also does a great job at that.


I may be a bit partial but I do think the preacher did a super duper job, too!

At the end of service we had two people being baptized.
One of them was Aurelia's (cute girl from Life Kids that you saw a pic of) mom, Maria. When Alissa went to get Aurelia to bring her out to watch, she said Kade broke down crying because he wanted to come watch, too. So, she brought him to me.

And he took in every bit of it!

This is Maria being baptized.

Here is Dave being baptized!
The baptisms were just awesome.
Maria and Dave both had lots of family and friends who came to support them.
There were lots of other first time guests with us for Easter as well!
Here is a picture that kind of gives you an idea of what a full house we had....

Yes, we were praying during this picture. You can see Kade is just anxiously waiting for our offering box to pass so he can place in it the things I had given him. Maybe he was afraid that if he bowed his head and closed his eyes he might just miss it.

One thing he certainly didn't miss was the music at the end!

He had the best time dancing for Jesus!
What a way to celebrate!
Don't think I could have imagined a better Easter!!
Hope yours was as good as ours!
And to think, tomorrow it will have been a whole week ago.
We at Life Church plan to keep on celebrating!