Easter 2020

Easter was a little (a lot, haha) different this year. With COVID-19 restrictions in place, there were no egg hunts, no family dinners, and no formal church services even! And for the life of me I can't remember what we did instead (#mombrain), but we didn't do our usual Holy Week activities that we normally do, which was weird also. (I think the church had some other activities they had suggested for this year, so we did those instead...but I just don't have pictures to help jog my memory)

Even though we missed being able to go to church and do all of our normal activities with family, the feelings of gratitude for our Savior Jesus Christ were just as strong. Words feel trite in trying to convey my love and gratitude for Him and His atonement and resurrection and all that is made possible through Him. Amidst all the chaos of the world, He is always there to comfort and give strength. I love Him, and I know that He lives.

Anyway, so it was a very different year, but it was still wonderful. We dressed up in the best clothes we had and took a picture using a timer on my phone, and we had a nice little family worship service at home--where Tucker presented a lesson about Easter that he had prepared ahead of time to teach his Deacon's quorum. (that was assigned before COVID, obviously)

And even though no one else's clothes matched, I couldn't NOT document our first Easter with a little girl, and her cute little Easter dress! :)

*I LOVE this dress I got from a friend, and I love that it was lace to match with Hallie! But unfortunately it's not nursing-friendly, so I literally wore it for 10 minutes to take pictures, and then I had to go change into something that I could nurse in, haha. (#thethingswedoforpictures)

Sweet Hallie. This was the same dress we did her newborn pictures in, and it was so fun to see how much she had grown!

Curt was so sad he couldn't be the Easter Bunny at any kind of egg hunt this year, so Hallie did a little stand-in for him with these adorable bunny ears someone in our new ward gave me:

Love her unimpressed face, hahahaha!

We did a little egg hunt at our house for the boys, which we were all hoping we could do outside, but because of so much dirt and cold temperatures, we opted to keep it indoors instead. (But we are all looking forward to future years of egg hunts in our giant yard!)

We did one first for the big boys while Hudson napped:

And then one just for Hudson when he woke up:

Also, since Lisa was in the hospital on Easter (she had been admitted a few days earlier because of some pregnancy complications--and the twins ended up being born the next day!), we wanted to do something special for the girls. So we filled a bunch of eggs for them and hid them in their yard for a social-distancing-friendly egg hunt while we watched them find them from our car. It was a fun thing to do that made the day extra special.

Hiding the eggs:

Watching the girls "find" them:

We found these fun pictures of Chad & Lisa and the girls from years past that we printed out and put in some of the eggs for fun :)

Oh, and these were the boys' Easter baskets--super simple. We don't make a big deal out of Easter baskets so that we can try to focus on the true meaning of Easter...but then it doesn't make for very cute pictures, haha:

Happy Coronavirus Easter!!! :)

Easter 2019

My Instagram post: Easter felt a little extra special this year (or maybe I should say the week leading up to Easter...Easter day itself was a little hard with crazy kids & too high of expectations on my part...🤪🤦🏻‍♀️ #reallife)—but as we’ve been studying the New Testament in church, as a family, and individually, I feel that I’ve come to know the Savior more, and subsequently drawn closer to Him. I’m so grateful for His loving sacrifice and resurrection, and for the knowledge that #becauseofhim I can be with all these crazy boys of mine forever. God be thanked for the matchless gift of His divine Son. ❤️

Easter really did feel more special this year. Since we've been studying the New Testament in our family & at church & in my personal scripture study, I have felt closer to the Savior as I've become more immersed in the stories of His life & ministry. And then His suffering in Gethsemane and on the cross at Calvery felt so much more personal this year--it brings tears to my eyes even as I type this, to know that He willingly suffered and died for ME. He lived the perfect life and did nothing but good as he served and blessed everyone around Him, and yet they crucified Him. He suffered more pain and agony than anyone could endure--more than any of us could imagine. The last line of "The Living Christ" always touches my heart since we memorized it this past Christmas, and it expresses my love and gratitude in the best words I can come up with: "God be thanked for the matchless gift of His divine Son." How grateful I am for Christ--for His life, His love, His infinite atonement, and His resurrection. I'm so grateful for Easter and the opportunity we have to celebrate Him.

We continued our tradition of celebrating/acting out scenes from The Holy Week leading up to Easter. (An idea I originally found HERE--though we do things a little more simplified.) Curt was out of town for the first few days of the Holy Week, so the boys & I just did it on our own. Here are some pictures of some of our activities:

Acting out Palm Sunday, with Christ riding into the city on a donkey:

Acting out the story of the Good Samaritan for Teaching Tuesday:

(we acted it out multiple times so each of the boys got to play each part, haha)

Our passover feast while watching the videos of the Last Supper and the suffering in Gethsemane:

The Saturday before Easter, we did our traditional ward Easter Egg hunt, with Curt as the Easter Bunny of course. (and it was a little sad & sentimental for us and a few close friends who we've told, knowing this is probably our last year with our ward...since it's looking like we really will be moving)

This was Hudson's first year "meeting" the Easter Bunny, and he actually loved him--he wasn't scared at all! But then he was pretty confused to have Curt take the mask off and find out it really was his dad inside, haha!

After the egg hunt, I came to find this scene in the living room: Hudson doing his best to open the eggs and get into all the candy with the big boys...!! Luckily I found this chocolate kiss and got it out of his mouth before he choked/swallowed the foil. This boy loves to try to do everything his older brothers do! And he definitely has a sweet tooth. ;)

Ever since we started celebrating the Holy Week, I've tried to find ways to make the boys' Easter baskets more Christ-centered. And the best thing that has worked is to find activities to add to our church bag--things they can do during sacrament meeting. This year I combined everything into one big Easter basket (aka: a laundry basket, haha), because I didn't want any of the boys to claim any of the activities as "theirs" (which makes sharing almost impossible). It worked out well, and having these few new things has helped make our Sundays a little easier!

Playing with their little Easter gifts from Grandma & Grandpa Smith on Easter morning:

Easter day was kind of hard for me this year, just because I really wanted/tried to encourage the boys to be more kind/reverent/obedient, etc during the day and especially during church...but it ended up just making me more frustrated and them more crazy. They weren't exceptionally bad or anything--I had just set my expectations too high. It was still a nice day, though, and we even got that good family picture together (that I posted above) after church!! That night we went to dinner with all of my family at my mom's house, and it was really nice.

Happy Easter!

Easter 2018

Since Easter was on General Conference Sunday this year, the Sunday before was the day to wear cute, matching outfits. And since that was at the bottom of my list this year with a new baby, I went through the boys' closets and did the best I could to pull something together at the last second. Definitely not the most coordinated, haha, but they still looked cute!! My mom came and watched Hudson for me on that Sunday so that I could go to sacrament meeting (I wasn't quite ready to take him and expose him to germs), and it felt so good to be back at church. When the boys got home that afternoon, I bribed them with candy and took a quick picture of them all before they changed. And they actually {somewhat} cooperated!! (minus Bronco's monster face that he kept doing in between this happy/open-mouthed face I got above, and Calvin doing everything he could to show his two missing front teeth, haha) But it still turned out pretty cute, and I call it a win!

This was our third year celebrating the Holy Week leading up to Easter. (ideas taken from here) We started out strong, but by the end of the week we weren't quite as "into" it, which I feel terrible about. It was just busy with a new baby and General Conference being the same weekend and soccer starting up, etc. So we did the activities, but they were more rushed, and our hearts weren't into it as much. (Or maybe it's because the novelty of it had worn off since we've done it two times before already?) So my goal for next year is to be more sincere with it.

Here's a picture from "Palm Sunday"--the boys were super excited to have Hudson pretend to be Jesus riding in on Tucker the donkey, haha:

And here was our mini passover feast while we watched the videos of the Last Supper and Gethsemane:

This was the first year in a long time that we didn't do a neighborhood and/or ward Easter egg hunt with Curt dressing up as the bunny...another bust. (Once again--it was just too much to try to take on with General Conference being the same weekend, having a new baby, me not being in primary to be able to organize it, etc.) So we just did a little family egg hunt in between sessions of General Conference. And that was still fun!

The best hiding spot, by far, was in the street sign...which Calvin was more than happy to climb up to get. :)

Eggs collected--ready to go inside and open them up!!

The boys were surprised, and then utterly disappointed, to find that there were only carrots inside the eggs, haha:

Since Easter was also April Fools Day, we had to do something, haha!

After they opened all the eggs, we gave them little baggies of jelly beans to make up for it. ;) And in their Easter baskets we gave them each a new swimsuit and a few eggs filled with chocolate candies.

We're just calling this the year of Easter fails, because this was yet another fail: the cinnamon rolls

I made the cinnamon rolls the night before so we could have them ready for breakfast when my mom, brother, and sister joined us for Easter breakfast. However, I got a late start to making them that night before (thanks to a nursing baby and boys not cooperating going to bed), and it was midnight by the time I got them rolled out. Rather than wait up another hour to let them rise and bake them, Curt & I decided it was more worth it to go to bed, so we tried putting them in the refrigerator overnight and pulling them out the next morning to finish rising. But unfortunately, that didn't work. We forgot to cover them, so they got pretty dried out, and then they just never really rose after that--they just spread out and flattened even more. So yes, it was the year of Easter fails. (But the rest of breakfast--green chili with breakfast burritos--turned out deliciously, thankfully!)

With all the fails, however, my letter board was on point, haha:

Despite the cinnamon roll fail, we still enjoyed breakfast with my family, and they stayed watching the morning session of conference with us, which was fun. And then that night we went down to Curt's parent's house for a nice Easter dinner. 

And even though the boys woke us up super early that morning by fighting and yelling, only made worse by the fact that we were up late filling eggs with carrots and making cinnamon rolls, and then Hudson was up a lot through the night too, so we were all sleep deprived and low on patience...we were able to all calm down and feel the spirit as we watched General Conference. It was such a neat experience to take part in the Solemn Assembly and sustain a new prophet, and then be watching as so many new policies and temples were announced. It was definitely a historic, spirit-filled conference. How grateful I am for President Nelson, and a for a personal witness that he truly is called of God and is the Lord's chosen prophet for this time.

It was an Easter of fails, but yet more importantly, an Easter filled with the spirit with a truly historic General Conference. I'm so grateful for Jesus Christ, for His atonement and resurrection, that allows us to overcome both physical and spiritual death. And I'm so grateful for my family, and the opportunity I have to be with them together forever.

Easter 2017

We did our Holy Week countdown to Easter (activities representing each day leading up to Easter), like we did last year. (I found the idea HERE) I really, really like this tradition--I feel like it really helps us focus on the Savior and the true meaning of Easter. To add to it this year, I found pictures that represented each day, and we put up the picture for each new day, so by the end of the week we had this display:

The was a picture of our Passover Thursday where we ate a {very low key} passover meal and watched the lds.com Bible Videos about the Last Supper and Gethsemane.

Here was our family picture in front of the temple for Spirit World Saturday:

Going along with focusing on the true meaning to Easter, instead of doing "traditional" Easter baskets, we decided to do baskets with things for Sundays--namely, new activities for church. (The boys have been struggling with being reverent during sacrament meeting lately, so it was the perfect time to switch up our activities and start with some new, more Christ-centered activities.) 

We made each of the boys a new bag with their name on it, with personalized binders that have Christ-centered coloring and activity pages. My favorites are these articles of faith coloring pages; dot to dots, mazes, and other activity pages; and activity pages from the church-produced coloring/activity books.

Nothing fancy, but the boys have really enjoyed their new bags, and I feel like it's simplified our Sundays and helped them be more reverent and focus on the Savior more.

Our other big Easter celebration was our traditional egg hunt with Curt as the Easter Bunny. In the past we've done it as a neighborhood egg hunt, but this year since I'm in charge of primary, we made it into a full-blown primary activity. We had a huge turnout, and it went really well!!

This wasn't even the whole group!

Cute boys:

Our traditional family picture with the Easter Bunny:

And just in case you forgot who the Easter Bunny was... ;)

He always does such a good job!

And just because we like to use the bunny costume as much as we can while we have it (we borrow it from my old employer, Rocky Mountain Mortgage--they are so nice to let us borrow it every year!!), we went and did a surprise visit to Cory & Allie. Allie knew we were coming and had Cory open the door...and he freaked out when a giant bunny rushed at him and gave him a huge hug as soon as he opened the door, haha!

Curt's parents had us (& Collin & Cory & Allie) over for a nice Easter dinner on Sunday night, so Curt of course had to bring the bunny suit to dinner to surprise everyone after we finished eating:

 Collin hates the bunny costume, haha:

We also did a little impromptu Easter coloring contest for the kids--they worked really hard & each earned a dollar!

The dinner was delicious, and it was a perfect Easter Sunday!!

Other fun Easter activities

We had the girls over for swap the Friday night before, so we made them these special bunny pancakes:

We also did a mini egg hunt with our boys using the eggs my mom sent:

Bronco was ALL about the Easter candy this year--as soon as an egg hunt was over, he was breaking into his eggs, eating as much candy as he could before we caught him.

And he was NOT happy when whenever we took the candy away, haha!

It really was a wonderful Easter this year. How grateful I am for Jesus Christ--for His love, example, and sacrifice. For the peace He brings to my life amidst uncertainty, trial, and heartache. And how grateful I am that I can be together with my family forever. What a wonderful thing to celebrate at Easter!