Easter

He is risen! 

His name shall be called Wonderful!

Alleluia!

Glory to God in the highest!

Hallelujah!

Those are some of my favorite Easter quotes, from hymns and scriptures. Happy Easter!

Saturday night I was feeling kind of bad because I did NOT feel ready for Easter. Normally I try to read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in the week or two leading up to Easter, and have an family home evening lesson about the atonement and resurrection. We didn't even have FHE this week since the kids and I were on the road driving home from Missouri on Monday night (and Sunday and Tuesday nights too, incidentally). I think I mentioned the true Easter story once in passing to one kid this week. It was just not a very Easter-y type of a week. I was drowning in laundry and post-trip recovery. Saturday I spent half the day in the Tri Cities running the Badger Mountain Challenge and doing a heaping pile of grocery shopping. So instead of feeling a calm sense of anticipation for Easter, all I was feeling Sunday morning was beat-up (from that brutal mountain race), tired, and unprepared. I read a few chapters in the New Testament to start the day off and that was about it.

I got the girls ready for church Sunday morning--tying their bows and doing their hair all pretty. Jay gets himself ready more or less these days (although he does occasionally try buttoning up his shirt after putting it on inside out, causing major frustration and lateness to church). I attempted to take pictures of all three kids in their cute springy Easter Sunday clothes. HAH! They were not in the mood. I guess you win some and you lose some!

 We took Jay's book away for the picture and he simply would not stop frowning. He said "not the camera!" when I asked him to come outside before church.

Rose felt like a queen in her dress. She was glowing and she wore her dress all day long.

 Pretty sure that seatbelt shouldn't hit him in the throat, but he was on his booster seat...

Photo-fails notwithstanding, I was pleased with how well the kids' clothes coordinated, since I cobbled their outfits together using Goodwill and hand-me-downs. It is incredibly satisfying to have well-dressed kids when all of their clothes are secondhand. Rose's pastel sparkly flowery dress that she felt royal wearing today was $5. I mean, how awesome is that?? I got Jay's yellow vest from some thrift store or another a couple of years ago and it only just started fitting him (for some reason boys' vests seem to run huge). His shirt, pants, and shoes were also thrift store finds. Amber's purple dress and sweater used to be one-year-old little Rose's. I'm sure that's more info about their clothes than you really cared to know, but I simply couldn't believe that their outfits that span years actually came together all coordinated for Easter. Fashion has never been my forte, so yay that I managed to coordinate a few colors.

Church on Easter was wonderful! I walked in feeling utterly unprepared for Easter and left feeling awesome about everything! Music about the Savior is beautiful and uplifting, and it goes straight to my heart while I wrestle with small children in our pew. Our ward has a sparse choir, especially in the men's section, but the music leader worked with what she had and the result was perfect: not unattainably operatic or complex, but simple and honest with a clear true message of love and truth.

At home we streamed the recording of Friday's MoTab performance of Handel's Messiah. They did a new arrangement and it was beautiful. The acoustics in the tabernacle were resonant and the notes were ringing with clarity. My favorite was the classic For Unto Us a Child is Born, where they start to rev up for the chorus "and his name shall be called Wonderful!" When the choir sang the word "Wonderful!" I got chills, it was that good. I felt the joy and truth and testimony in that one word so strongly, like angels were singing along.

Sunday after Amber's nap we did a 10 minute backyard Easter egg hunt for the kids. Jeff and I filled the eggs with mini marshmallows, fruit snacks, and raisins, and tossed them around the back yard, then turned the kids loose. Amber wanted nothing to do with her basket or the eggs until we handed her an egg and she discovered that there was something yummy inside it! Then she clutched her basket and marched around the yard, methodically collecting five eggs.

 The one pigtailed wonder! She ripped out one of her pigtails and I didn't have the heart to subject her to a redo.

We forgot to impose egg quota limits on Jay and Rose, so Jay came out on top in the final egg tally. Rose was distraught about it. In fact, it was quite the emotionally fraught egg hunt for Rose--she kept stopping and sobbing about Jay having too many eggs. I tried to explain to her that stopping and crying about it was only giving him more time to find more eggs, but the logic was lost on her. It seems that our drive across the country this week is still in our systems. I know I'm feeling utterly worn OUT! After all 31 of the plastic eggs were found, the kids came in out of the gale-force March winds to enjoy their spoils. Since we only sprinkled a few mini marshmallows or fruit snacks in each egg, I was not worried about the kids eating too much. It was so nice not to have to police their egg enjoyment or impose limits on their treat consumption. Rose said she wished there was some candy in some of the eggs, but I did not! At her comment, Jeff and I chuckled and reminisced about the jelly bean debacle of 2011, when almost 2 year old Jay managed to eat a pile of jellybeans before we noticed and then he was a complete emotional sugar-high-low-wreck for the rest of the day.

The Whites hosted family Easter feast on Sunday night. I contributed a salad and rolls, and on our walk home we discovered that we had left a trail of fresh rolls on the road between our houses, Hansel and Gretel style. I packed the warm rolls in an Easter basket, and they were piled kind of high so I tucked a cloth around them to keep them in and protected from the wind. A corner of the cloth must've come undone while Jay carried the basket (or maybe he started swinging it in the breeze) and we lost two beautiful round buns on the road. Some lucky stray dog probably had a delicious Easter snack that night.