Easter 2014

I convinced Ethan it would be a great idea to have some families join us for Easter dinner so we could have a massive egg hunt on his birthday.  We ended up with twenty-three people so I scrapped the idea of using my fine china and we ate off paper plates instead.  So tacky.  I cringe just looking at the pictures but the food was divine.  We had our traditional ham, {if you haven't made this yet then you are really missing out.  You will never cook ham any other way ever again} potatoes, salad, rolls, and chocolate birthday cake for dessert.  We hid four special eggs that had dollar bills in them just to make the hunt a little more exciting.  Parker even got in on the action.

While we are on the subject of Easter, I just need to throw this out there.  We don't do the Easter Bunny at our house.  No Easter baskets, gifts, nothing.  I even told my kids there is no such thing as the Easter Bunny.  I never planned it to be this way.  It all started by accident one year when we lived in Japan and I was just too busy to get around to doing Easter baskets.  It wasn't until we were sitting at church that I even remembered I had forgotten.  I never said anything to the boys and they never asked so I figured why bother with the whole thing especially if they don't even care.  For me, after Lindsey died, Easter was all about celebrating the resurrection of the Savior and the hope it gives me.  Having a visit from a bunny just felt like an insult.  I can come to grips with the whole Santa Claus thing because at least Santa is a human and represents giving so I can let him be part of our Christmas celebrations, but the Easter bunny?  Seriously?  He can't even lay eggs!  Why not a chick or something?  They can lay eggs which makes a little more sense to me.  So the kids hunt for eggs that I hide and they eat plenty of candy but there's no big presents or baskets.  They get new Sunday clothes because they need them and that's how we roll around here.  If anything it sure simplifies things and I like simple.

It took a lot of work to get a good shot

Love Landon pouting over there

Tickling ends all pouting at our house

The "kid" table

Buffet style dinner

The adult/teenager table

Kids demonstrating "The Worm"

Parker's egg

Marcus found the dollar egg

The best birthday cake he'll ever have, thanks to my friend Rachel

Laughing until we cried playing Telestrations.  Playing with a French foreign exchange student brought the fun to a whole new level