Easter Weekend

It's been one busy Easter weekend.

Spring Break started on Friday and Seth was off so we cleaned and shopped and did the regular old TKD thing, where hooray, belts had arrived! Here's Camo Man!

Saturday morning we painted Easter eggs, which I have NO pictures of because I was working on my lesson for Sunday. Then we were off to Milwaukee for the Brewers game. We played the Cardinals, which is funny because both games we went to last year were against the Cardinals. Sadly, the Brewers have lost every game we have ever been to as long as we've lived here (even last year when they had 96 wins we managed to go when they lost). On Saturday, they won 6-0. Glad that curse is broken. Although they have lost their other two games this season, so maybe now they will lose when we aren't there. Uh-oh!

Look who we ran into on our way in to the stadium!

We usually sit across the stadium from Bernie but since Chloe is obsessed with him we sat right by his dugout this time. See, he is right by us. He waved at us about 100 times but by then I had put the camera away. Chloe loved following his every move but I didn't like those seats because Bernie's balcony blocks the jumbotron...never realized how much I look at the jumbotron.

How cute is this little baseball enthusiast? She charmed her daddy into hot dogs, licorice ropes, cotton candy and nachos.

Chorizo and the boys lining up to race. I took a video again but do not want to wait 2 hours for it to load. Chorizo won, again! By a mile this time.

Saturday night we got home and I was up until 3AM working on my Easter handouts for church and playing Easter bunny so as you can imagine, Easter morning came way too soon so I do not have too many pictures of that either.

For my Easter handout I wanted to make panoramic sugar eggs that were empty inside, like the tomb of course, but could not find a mold anywhere. So....after much consulting with Seth and Valerie I blew out eggs and dyed the hollow shells. Then we (by we I mean me and Seth...he helped me with so many things for this lesson...so grateful!) got transfer paper and transferred an image of the Savior and a scripture on to the eggs which was cool, but half the time it peeled and it took forever. Then we modpodged a pic of the Savior on the eggs and that was okay but looked a little messier than I wanted it to. So I finally just attached a picture and scripture to cardstock and wrapped it around the egg with flower brads and ribbon.

Then the eggs went into a goodie box with Easter grass and candy and I finally hit the sheets.

After my Easter bunny duties, of course. No new Easter clothes this year. The girls' dresses from last year still fit and since they were kind of fancy they had not worn them once since then.

Chloe held up her Bernie Brewer pillow pet (that is what the silly girl asked for) and the mustache happened to fall right on her upper lip. Ha,ha! Jessica, if you are reading this...you can see the Desitin line I was telling you about on my wall behind Chloe...told you it was visible and it goes all the way across that wall.

Since we were ready for church early I decided to stop by the lake on the way to church and snap a couple pictures of the kids. Epic fail! It was so windy and the kids were freezing and Alyssa does not open her eyes when we are outdoors, even when it is not bright so we got a little bit of this....

I did finally get Alyssa in a shaded area so she would open her eyes and the wind was actually blowing in her favor for a minute. She looked stunning in my view finder. Sadly, I adjusted one thing on my camera to compensate for the shade and not the other things that I needed to adjust to balance out the changes so I ended up with massively overexposed shots. I didn't notice until I had taken like 20 because I was in too big a hurry to stop and look at the display screen. I should totally just stick with auto on this camera because I suck at this but at least it was one more lesson learned and I will go back and try again when I am not in such a hurry. You can still tell she looked really pretty though, right?

I even missed my chance at her ever elusive smile with teeth.

I did make her try again when I noticed my error but by then she was over it and we really needed to get to church. She is still such a pretty little thing though.

Alyssa's hair will NOT hold a curl. I curled it for her viola concert and it was stick straight before we even got there. I left her in hot curlers for a long time this morning and hair sprayed like crazy and even with the wind and time lapse, she still had a little bit of curl after church. Amazed!

That face! Such a knockout!

Then we were off to church where I had the privilege of teaching all the YW today. I usually only teach the Beehives and when we are combined, the Presidency teaches. I don't know why I got to do it today but I am so glad. Since there is no Easter lesson in the manual I had to decide what to teach and it helped me really dig in to the scriptures this week. I read the last 3 chapters of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John twice each this week because I was amazed at how much the story came alive for me and how I took completely different things from the story than I have in the past. I will have to write all my thoughts down somewhere, but don't worry, I won't do it here, not right now. I also studied the appearance of the resurrected Christ in the Book of Mormon and it was such an enriching experience for me this Easter week. I didn't end up having near as much time in class as I thought I would but I hope I conveyed at least some of what I learned this week. I won't re-teach my lesson but if you want to hear a great Easter message, I used this video in class...

and this song...(didn't use this slide show cause I didn't like the pictures, just used the song on itunes).


So much I could say, and yet so much I could never say but I am deeply grateful for a Savior and I know that He lives and that He came for me. And for you. Happy Easter!!!