Easter Preschool...

Last week I taught preschool and our theme was Easter. We had a great time (or at least I did and hopefully the kids did too!).

Here are a few of the things we did:

"Carrots" made with golfish

"Carrots" made with cheese puffs!

Chow mein birds nest

Egg & basket matching game

Egg hunt

Bunny ears

Color matching

Resurrection story

Painting egg puzzle

M&M, frosting and nila wafer flowers

Thanks Kathryn for the idea!!

Happy Easter...

I feel like I totally dropped the Easter ball this year. No new Easter dress for Emma or ties for the boys. No dyeing eggs. No family pictures. I think I was too engrossed in figuring out preschool ideas for Easter that I just didn't make the time. But luckily on Sunday the Easter bunny did remember to come and leave Easter baskets and hid Easter eggs all over the house.

 

Hopefully that made up for the lack of other Easter festivities! That and the fact that we had pancakes, eggs and pig (otherwise known as bacon!) for breakfast!

Produce section egg hunt...

Today after the morning session of General Conference we loaded up and headed to our Albertsons grocery store. They were having and Easter egg hunt. They've had them in the past and had hard boiled eggs. I'm not a fan, but I knew this year it was plastic filled eggs!! I figured the kids would each get a few-I was wrong!!

Can you tell Emma was excited!!

Let the hunting begin!! It was all through the produce section!

Henry got the hang of it pretty quick!

Mo didn't want to stop for a picture!

There was no shortage of eggs! Every kid we saw gathering had baskets filled to the brim!

Do you think he enjoyed it?

Here's the haul after I refilled 26 eggs for Mo to take to preschool this week plus another small bowl that didn't fit!!

I'm kicking myself that I already bought some Easter candy!!

Easter weekend...

Saturday started with a bang as we took the kids over to the annual Walmart Easter egg hunt. Well, N8 took Bud and Henry and I arrived late with Emma and Mo. It's crazy, parents push and shove and throw eggs into their children's baskets. It's a great time and we enjoy going each year that they have it!

We finally had some non-windy time and took advantage of it. We went out on the local bike path so Bud and Emma could practice their bike riding (we got Bud a new bigger bike and Emma is now riding Bud's old bike). It's nice for them to have a long stretch without cars in the way!

Then we headed over to Staples and Walmart to do some anniversary shopping. This week N8 and I will be celebrating our 10 year wedding anniversary. What I planned on getting N8 was out of stock, so I'll be ordering it this week. N8 got me the Wii fit plus. I hope I like it!

Once the kids got their profile set up on the new Wii game we did some egg coloring:


We rounded out the night with N8 and I going to the adult session of Stake Conference and Tasty Freeze after.

This morning the kids were excited to see what the bunny had left:


Then we got ready for church. We got Emma a new Easter dress at Kmart and I decided to make faux ties to match for the boys!


We had an excellent dinner over at Ricky and Kim's house and am now enjoying a semi-quiet Sunday afternoon. Happy Easter!!

Easter, before the bunny...

The kids had today off of school. I'm not exactly sure why, maybe due to Good Friday. N8 took today off and we headed down to LA last night and stayed in the patron apartments. The kids love staying at the temple. I was able to just barely make it into the last session of the evening. While i was in N8 took the kids to the visitors center:

And around the temple grounds:

Emma took her class "pet" Gary the Gateway Gator with us on the trip. He enjoyed meeting Gary the snail:

I feel blessed that we could take this time before celebrating Easter to attend the temple, renew our covenants and remind our children of the reason we celebrate Easter. Of course there will be eggs and the bunny will be stopping by our house, but hopefully they more fully realize that the reason we celebrate is for the Resurrection of our Savior Jesus Christ.

My thought are turned to the Savior at this time knowing of the sacrifice he made for each one of us. We as parents make sacrifices everyday for our children and I am grateful for my parents and all they did for me and my siblings. My mom today found out today that the cancer has returned and she will have to undergo Chemo again. It is only with faith and the knowledge of all that the Savior has done for us that I can look at this trial and not have anger. There is sadness, but not anger.

What an Easter!

I love when Easter falls on General Conference weekend. We started the morning with Easter buckets and finding eggs throughout the house.

Then we listened to Conference. So many of the talks directly spoke of Christ's resurrection and of family. We all really enjoyed it. Bud even sat through each of the Apostles talks. I printed out a little guide for him so he had a space to draw what their tie looked like and then words from talk.

Emma and Mo got a little bored and played dress-up!

On Monday and post-Easter egg hunt & potluck was planned at a local park. Lots of people were planning on coming and looking forward to getting together and having a egg hunt for their children. That morning the sustained 40 mph winds and nippy weather made the plans change. N8 and I offered to have it at our house. I though maybe less people would come because of the weather and that it was at our house. That was not the case. N8 said he counted a solid 70 people!! That a lot of people for our house, but it was a blast. Lot of visiting, eating and egg hunting!!