Easter Events

Happy belated Easter! It was a great weekend! Well, it was mostly great - I was rather sad on Saturday because Ben wasn't able to spend the day with us like I would have hoped. He's just been soooo busy with his surgery rotation this past month that he had to spend a day getting some stuff done, such as studying and applying for 4th year rotations. However, because of his hard work on Saturday we were able to have the whole day with him on Sunday. He even woke up with the kids! I sure have missed my Ben! Anyway, despite not having Ben with us during our Saturday activities, we managed to have a good time. So - to backtrack - Friday we did Easter egg hunt #2 with friends and it was great! Emma just can't get enough candy! ;) On Saturday morning we went to Egg hunt #3 at Ben's school (without Ben... sigh...). As with last year, Emma LOVED jumping in the inflatable bounce house. She's always had a real fondness for jumping. :) Saturday evening we attended the Easter Pageant at the Mesa Temple with Ben's family (once again, we were Ben-less... ho hum...). I was really impressed by the show that was put on. And it was soooo busy with people. But, we got there plenty early and had seats relatively close. We had a good time hanging out till the pageant started. We had a good 2 hours to kill, so we ate dinner, chatted, wandered the grounds and attempted to take some good pictures of the kids. It's so darn hard to get decent pictures with crazy kiddos - I've just learned to snap as many as I can and hope that one of them turns out good. During the performance, I was impressed by how interested Emma was. She really enjoyed the costumes and the animals - she was really frightened during the thunder and crucifixion scene, though. I wasn't sure how I was going to like watching these events depicted in this type of setting, but I thought that it was done well. It really was a great event to be a part of. I hope to go again next year! It was nice to have an activity that reminded us all of why we celebrate Easter - it's easy to get caught up in all the Easter bunny and Egg hunt stuff and not devote enough attention to the true central focus of the holiday. Emma really learned a lot from the Easter Pageant and I was glad for it.

Sunday was just great! I was seriously just sooo happy to have Ben with us the whole day, without any school stuff hogging the attention. :) We drove down to Gilbert and attended church with Ben's family. Afterwards we spent our time hanging out at Ben's parents home. Easter dinner was really yummy - ham, rolls, "egg desserts", spinach salad, and scalloped potatoes. I was particularly glad to have leftovers to bring home for dinner tonight - I love it when I don't have to make dinner! After Easter dinner we had Egg hunt #4 at Grandma's in her backyard - the kids really cleaned up - I've got a huge amount of candy sitting in a large bowl here at my house now. If anyone felt like they didn't get their fill of chocolate and sweets, then head on over and help us eat all of this! :)

On a side note - while we were hanging out with Ben's family on Easter, Becca tried out a little walking push toy and she just LOVED it! She's been practicing her walking while holding my hands for the past couple of weeks and this was just so liberating for her - she was able to 'walk' without mommy! I'll be so excited when she can do this completely on her own - she'll be sooo happy with herself!