Easter!

 It was a pretty low key Easter now that the kids are older, Audra is at school, and we are trying to focus more on the spiritual part of Easter. We did a small Sedar Dinner (Christianized and very much simplified) last weekend so that this weekend we could focus on Conference. This is a tradition of ours, and it's great for us to remember Passover and all that Christ has done for us.

Ann made us a delicious Easter dinner, and the girls had a great time looking for eggs with their cousins, and Ben did hide eggs for them here, too. Our yard is small so Ben has to get creative in his egg hiding to trick the girls.

I was a good day, albeit a simple one.

Easter!

 We are trying to follow Elder Stevenson's council and make Easter more meaningful and more like Christmas. Of course, though, we also still did an Easter egg hunt. It's Audra's last one at home- at least for awhile- so we it was extra special.

 

I set up a special Easter display with our deceased family members. Honestly, it made me tear up every time I saw Matt's picture. He's too young. He shouldn't be in the display. But, ultimately, I do believe that because Christ is risen, Matt still lives. And that is what matters.

My parents were in town which was really nice.

The girls were excited to finally be able to wear their new dresses.

Easter hunt with the cousins:

We do a Mormon-ized Passover dinner every year. It's actually a pretty cool tradition that I have loved doing because it brings in Passover and ancient scripture. We do a Jerusalem dinner for Christmas, so it's nice to do a Passover dinner for Easter. Except we actually never had a night to to do it, so we ended up doing it for Easter lunch. That's probably a much more practical way for us to do it, and it worked out really well.

Overall, it was a great day. Mac and Ann hosted a wonderful dinner and evening, and it was a nice day to remember the importance of Easter.

Birthday Boys

 We celebrated Mac and Ben and their Birthdays on Sunday!

Valentine's

 Me: I made it with a lot of love.

Ben: I think you need less love and more flour.**

**oops. I know how to bake chocolate chip cookies. They are his favorite and I could literally have multiple affairs, but then present him with a plate of fresh, homemade chocolate chip cookies and he'd be like, "oh, no problem. Give me some cookies!" But, I was distracted and only put two cups of flour instead of 3. Maybe next year it will work out.

We made our traditional fondue:

Birthday Celebration

Went to View house for dinner and then to see Jersey Boys with this handsome guy tonight. I heard more F-words in that two hours than in the entire 5 years I taught high school, but we both really enjoyed the music and the show.

One line in the show says, "and my beautiful wife... " On the way home I told Ben it's weird men only ever say, "my beautiful wife" and never "my ugly wife." Surely some men have ugly wives.

So now I'm begging him to get up in church to bear his testimony and say, "and I'm grateful for my ugly wife Christina" because I think it would be hilarious to see all the shocked faces turn to me while I'm dying with tears of laughter, because come on- would that not be the most hilarious thing you ever heard said at church?!? Which of course got him laughing, envisioning people spitting out their water as they hear him say that, which got me laughing so hard I was crying.

And that kind of humor is why neither of us could ever have married anyone else.

Easter!

 This year we tried to make Easter a bigger, more spiritual deal like Christmas, as Elder Stevenson has asked us to. We did our best. It's hard because unlike Christmas, the world doesn't shut down for two weeks. Instead of two weeks free from school or any other obligations, we still had soccer, band, work, school, homework, Church activities, etc. But we tried.

We did a Christian version of a Seder dinner, for brunch on Easter morning before church. We read the Easter story in a 7 day "last week" of Christ's life. The Easter baskets were full of a small amount of candy, but mostly religious things.

Audra played in a beautiful Easter concert at the Castle Rock Stake Center on Easter Eve. She played the trumpet which was pretty awesome- it sounded amazing.

Easter morning

Sedar dinner/brunch:

Easter egg hunt:

Easter Dirt Cake- it was delicious!