Happy Easter!!!

We've had an absolutely fantastic Easter weekend!! So much family fun time!! Highlights from this week and weekend:

• David #3 praying every time he says the prayer for the last two weeks for: 1. "Please bless Ella and Brycy and LeAnn and Jared to come visit" (he's been counting down every day for 2 weeks. He got up every morning and yelled, "Mom it's 3 days!!", etc until they came) 2. "Please bless we'll go to the swimming pool for being a big listener" 3. "Please bless that we'll do Easter on the ground" 4. "Please bless Jesus that he died for us." (I love his prayers. They're so sincere and cute and everything starts with "please bless".)
• Jen coming home on Friday evening.
• Going to the Easter egg hunt at Church with all of the little kids and getting to see 4 new baptisms that same day. What a great time to be baptized!! Quite tender!
• Taking the boys and Madilyn to the swimming pool. There's a new community center here and they have a really nice swimming pool with a kiddy section/beach. The kiddy section has a really large 2 foot pool with all sorts of fun kiddy water things in it--wave pool, sprayers, etc. and a water slide. Jen came along and the boys were just SO HAPPY!! They love going swimming and we always manage to go when Jen's around and she's such a good sport.
• Jared, LeAnn, Ella and Bryce coming in. Spending time chatting, playing, building puzzles, eating absurd amounts of food, coloring Easter eggs, kidtastrophes, yummy Easter dinner together with everyone, lots of Easter egg hunts with the kids (Grandpa hiding the eggs and all the kids looking for them), going to church together, enjoying the Easter sunshine, snuggling with Bryce, and Easter baskets for everyone. A funny moment: Mom set the mashed potatoes on the table today and Ella picked up the massive potato spoon and shoved the whole thing in her mouth and then put the spoon back in the bowl. Now if I did that, not cute. But Ella--cute.
• And the real highlight of Easter had to be tonight. We did an Easter activity with eggs and pictures all about the Savior. The boys really had a good time and I think David got several of the concepts. It was a nice way to finish up a fantastic weekend. Thanks, Valeri, for the ideas on the eggs. We'll use this for many years to come and it can be tweaked for all ages. :) http://valeriandersen.blogspot.com/2009/04/easter-story-egg-hunt.html

Hope you all had a great Easter!!