Easter

With Daniel working at a church and me volunteering most every Sunday, we have found that Easter Sunday is often not an enjoyable, relaxing holiday.  We know the day is designed as a celebration of the resurrection, but it is easy for the busyness of the day to overwhelm us, or at least me. Most Sunday mornings are stressful at our house, and Easter is definitely not an exception.  I have been working for the past few years to make Easter a good day of celebration for us, and this year was great!

Getting pictures of the girls and our family in our Easter outfits is important to me.  I have managed to do it every year since we had kids, and I'm determined to keep up the tradition.  BUT...I know that trying to take pictures on Easter Sunday morning before church is next to impossible.  (I had to be there at 7:00 am this year).  So most years, I try to get the girls dressed up and do an Easter photo shoot before Easter day.  Everyone is much more relaxed that way!  And then, I have pictures to use to send Easter cards to all the grandparents.

So here are this year's pictures.  Isla has grown to be more cooperative in pictures recently, which is great!  Their dresses are made by Jelly the Pug, and I got them from Zulily for $20 each.  I thought they were super cute.

Then on Easter Sunday, we just had the job of getting one family picture taken.  Everyone was cooperative this year and we ended up with a good picture!

Audrey wanted me to do something special to her hair for Easter.  However, I knew I had to be at church at 7:00 am, and letting Daniel fix her hair was not really a possibility.  So, we found a tutorial on how to do Bandu knots.  Audrey slept with her hair in these bun knots all night.  In the morning, I had Daniel bring her to church with the knots still in, so that I could take them out and fix her hair there.  It ended up being really cute!  I was impressed with how curly her hair was.

Getting an Easter lunch ready after a busy morning at church is also not a reasonable (or fun) idea.  Instead, we went out to lunch at a restaurant and invited some friends over for an early evening Easter cookout.

After lunch, the girls came home and found their Easter baskets.  We've never really talked about the Easter Bunny, but they were really interested in the Easter Bunny this year.  I told them the Easter Bunny was so happy to learn that Jesus is alive, that he wanted to give presents to them to celebrate.  That was my attempt at connecting Jesus and the Easter Bunny.  I don't know how much they cared about my attempt at teaching them a lesson, but they were excited about their baskets!

Happy (belated) Easter from us!