Easter!

We had a lot of fun with Easter celebrations this year. The weekend before Easter, on Saturday, Chris's brigade had a big Easter festival with bounce houses, face painting, the Easter bunny, and of course, and Easter egg hunt. We took the kids and had a great time on the sunny, cool day.

Waiting to get her face painted

"2 Easter baskets. Woo hoo!"

Apparently the Easter bunny isn't as scary as Santa to Maddie. It helped that he gave the girls Cadbury cream eggs!

The little kids had their Easter egg hunt first. It was the first one for Maddie. She picked up on the idea quite quickly and loved it. 

It apparently takes a lot of thought and effort to pick up Easter eggs, hence the tongue sticking out.

(The tongue is still out!)

"Phew! That was exhausting! I need a drink."

Maddie loved to swing her basket around like crazy. You can see the egg flying out which is what they all eventually did...multiple times.

 Claire was in the older group. I was amazed at how much faster she has gotten in a year. She used to be quite relaxed about it. This year, I could hardly keep up with her! I'm surprised Chris was able to even get some pictures of her!

On Easter weekend, they had a little Easter egg hunt in the px (a military department store.) They had coloring for the kids, and door prizes as well. In fact, Chris and I both were drawn for door prizes, but we only accepted one prize. I ended up winning Chris some DKNY cologne which was valued at over $60 on amazon. Yea! The kids had fun going through the clothing department looking for eggs. They also had some hidden in the shopette in another part of the building. The Easter Bunny was there, and Claire probably stood there holding his hand for at least 5 minutes. She was so excited to see him again.

We decided to give the girls their Easter bunny ears I got them on Saturday instead of waiting for Sunday. They're pretty cute!

Every year, I look forward to eating the Easter cake. I grew up with it called a Hawaiian wedding cake, but when I joined Chris's family, I learned they make the same thing but call it an Easter cake. I love having an excuse to eat it once a year so gladly adopted that tradition. It's just a yellow cake with a layer of vanilla pudding/ cream cheese combo, topped with crushed pineapple, cool whip, and coconut. Yum! So refreshing and tasty. This year, I thought it would be fun to make it in a bunny shape. I looked at some pictures on pinterest and realized how easy it would be using just two round cake pans. Claire was so excited to decorate the bunny cake with me! I dyed coconut for the first time to help decorate him, but left part of him coconut free since Claire doesn't really like it.

Later on Saturday, we dyed some Easter eggs. It was a first for Maddie, and since it looked kind of like gatorade that she's had, she tried to drink it. Haha.

After the kids went to bed, I got their Easter baskets ready. Claire has a really cute Easter basket in storage, and we'll get Maddie a nice one next year, but this year, we got little ones instead. After I stuffed them, I hid them in the house like my mom used to do for me. In the morning, they went searching for their baskets and enjoyed the goodies inside!

Claire just walked right by her's hidden between the fridge and the wall. 

Maddie found her's!

Bubble time!

Claire was really excited to read her story. Maddie was more concerned about her treats. She has quite a sweet tooth.

We then got ready to go to church. I sang "His Hands" and had organized a church choir to sing "This is the Christ" for the Easter program at church.

After church, we had a tasty Easter dinner with the missionary couple, the Carlins, over to join us. Chris unfortunately had some army duty to deal with so while he made the dinner, he joined us late to actually eat it, but besides that, we had a wonderful day together. We watched "The Lamb of God" and really enjoyed talking about Christ and His sacrifice for us.