Dress Rehearsal

As it does every few years, General Conference falls on Easter Sunday this year. General Conference equals watching the feed from Salt Lake in our living room, usually in pajamas. This means that us mommies that live to dress our children in adorable clothes miss the chance to find the perfect spring dress for our little girls, and to dress our boys in pastels. No problem…we’ll just do it the weekend before! (Sorry daddies – those wallets won’t get a break this time.)

Since we are usually in our own ward on Easter, this year we decided to go to church with Jason’s dad and stepmom in St. Augustine. Today we celebrated Easter with my parents.

I dressed up the kids in their spring finery and we went to church. We discovered that although Grady’s shirt and sweater vest fit perfectly, the scrawny little thing’s shorts are waaaay to big. Guess I need to pin them before next week.

After church, we went to my mom and dad’s house and the kids found a surprise waiting for them:

There were three little baskets sitting there and a trail of eggs that lead to their Easter gift from Nina and Papa – a “gift certificate” to ride the hamster balls at the mall.

I love that in the note, my mom instructed them not to push and shove, and that it didn’t matter how many eggs they found. I wonder who she might of had in mind when she included that line….

After a wonderful breakfast that mom and I cooked together, Jake and Emma went in the backyard to hunt the eggs again. I put some in really obvious places for Jake, but I made Emma work for them – most of hers were above her head.

The kids had so much fun that I told them to have Nina help them hide eggs and then Jason and I would go hunting. There was some trash talking, but I won by default. Jake decided not to hide his eggs, so his (full) basket was sitting by the slide. Jason picked it up and declared himself the winner. I call that cheating!

Once all the eggs had been found (or claimed), Jason came up with the greatest game EVER. The rules are simple: pelt the children with plastic eggs, which they can throw back and (try) to hit you with. I think I am going to have to keep some eggs around the house…I got some aggression out, and they thought it was hysterical fun!

Unfortunately, the rain came and ended our fun. Meanwhile, Grady and Gretchen finally woke up from their naps and I was able to get a few pictures of my littlest Easter egg:

It took a couple of tries to get a good one, and as you can tell she wasn’t really into it:

I do love that picture. Some of my favorite pictures of my kids are the ones when their true feelings and personalities shine through!

As far as dress rehearsals go, this one was great - and I really can’t wait to teach Mimi and Papa our new game!