Easter

I love thinking about new life and all the wonderful things Easter celebrates. We had extra happy news this year.

Easter

This Easter was great.  I guess since our kids haven't really been old enough for it to matter we had never discussed our Easter traditions as far as egg hunts and baskets were concerned. In my family at some point on Saturday you go and dye eggs, then the Easter bunny (loosely called such since I never remember believing in such a person, I always knew it was my dad) hides the eggs and baskets in the yard.  We always had money in the eggs and most years I remember that we had a specific basket with our name on it.  Sunday was all about religious meaning and a ham diner, we didn't really do candy or bunny sort of things on the actual Easter Sunday. If it was conference the egg hunt would happen between sessions on Saturday and there would be jelly beans available for all the sessions. 

Stuart (I should have him write this up) from what I understand they did their egg hunt Saturday with their own basket.  Then when they woke up they had to search the house and find their filled basket.  I heard there were some pretty creative hiding spots (such as the inside of the piano!) The Fuller cousins made a regular pilgrimage for Easter and Stuart often talks about dozens of eggs to be dyed and I'm sure there was a veritable feast with all those fun cousins. 

So the question this year was what should we do with the baskets?  We haven't formally decided yet, but we decided to do our egg hunt a bit early while Mom Larsen was still here and the kids used their baskets then. We also joined the Laws for an egg hunt at my dad's house (I don't ever remember $50 dollars at egg hunts growing up haha)vvvv  Sunday morning we put their filled baskets on the table.  I think maybe next year we will try hiding the baskets before we leave for church and letting them look for them when we return (candy filled kids during sacrament are not my favorite experience). After church we took a picnic to Azalea park and enjoyed the flowers in bloom and a quick photo shoot.  I guess this is the year we should decide how we will do things so that we can establish a tradition...it's so fun Chiara is now able to participate in holiday celebrations.  I also made a sort of Easter advent with little symbols of the events leading up to the Atonement, Crucifiction, and Resurrection that I think will be nice to use in future years.

Mostly my favorite part of this Easter was spending time with family.  I really love when Stuart is able to be home with us.

The Big Easter Post

We enjoyed the festivities of Easter with these two little bunnies:

We were really happy Stuart could come home for Easter...He helped us enjoy not only one but two big egg hunts.  It was so fun how excited Chiara was about egg hunts.  I am starting to see that holidays are about to get really exciting with our kids...

But my favorite part of Easter is Sunday, when we put away the eggs and candy and celebrate the Resurrection of our Savior with beautiful music at Church and by spending time eating our traditional Ham dinner with family.  Chiara and Asher got these special outfits made by my dear friend Reagan for Easter Sunday.

I hope all our family and friends that we didn't get to spend time with this Easter season experienced the same appreciation of the pure love of the Savior as we did.

Easter!

Since we were vacationing in Utah this year for Easter we had a egg hunt early with my parents.

I think Chiara approved of the hunt... especially the sweet reward of jellybeans!

I don't even want to think about how much sugar she must have consumed this year.

Easter Fashion Shoot!

We were excited to see most of the Larsen Family in Utah!

As a special commemoration of Easter we decided to visit Stuart's Grandpa and Grandma Larsen's graves.

It was beautiful and a great reminder of what Easter stands for besides the sugar and bunnies.