Easter

I love Easter. I love the tender spirit that comes with reflecting on the Savior, His life, death, and Resurrection. I love the music of Easter. I love welcoming in springtime and new life. I love celebrating with family with delicious meals, and yes, I love the treats! This year we offered to host Easter for the Dickinson family because 1) we have the perfect yard for hiding eggs with all the landscaping, and 2) we just put in a play set that we wanted the cousins to help us initiate! We celebrated on Saturday, and it was a lot of fun, and a beautiful day. The Easter Bunny himself even made a surprise appearance! We had our usual kids' and adults' egg hunts, and for the second year in a row, I struck gold! (Well, actually, this year I got the silver egg ...) Yay!

Grant's sister Gaylyn made a very playful Easter Bunny!

 

Eliot wanted in on the dressing up action!

 

Me and my sister-in-law Brenda with our boys, along with the Easter Bunny holding sweet baby Brooklyn. Notice Z keeping his distance. He hates costume characters! Cried his eyes out when he met Mickey and Santa, and wanted nothing to do with the Easter Bunny. 

 

I quickly snatched up offering to make desserts so I would have the excuse to make my favorite carrot cake and try out some new Our Best Bites cupcake ideas ... which, if I do say so myself, turned out darling!

 

LOVED this idea from Our Best Bites, and it made the perfect visiting teaching treat! Little egg cartons (a dozen size cut in half) with their adorable printout, filled with mini cupcakes ... so cute! And I was so glad I found the gummy carrots at Target so I didn't have to make my own like they do at OBB. I did not have time to be rolling out Starbursts and cutting up Twizzlers!!

On Easter morning, it didn't take Zach long to figure out that the eggs were filled with candy. He could care less about looking for hidden eggs, so long as we kept opening the ones he found (or that Eliot found) and giving him jelly beans ... I have only myself to blame for his sweet tooth!

 

 Eliot was perfectly content to take advantage of his brother's distraction with the candy and rake in all the loot ... 

 

Mr. Reader Eliot kept getting distracted by the new books he and Zach got in their baskets. I try to keep Easter pretty simple, but the boys always get a new book, along with a needed item (this year Eliot got a replacement watch, since the one he got at Christmas went through the wash and broke, and Zach got a new pair of sunglasses). In my basket this year, I got a new CD of primary songs I wanted, a bottle of bright nailpolish, and a new scarf. I had a hard time thinking of things for Grant's basket, so I gave him cash in an egg ... which I think he was more than happy with!

 We had contemplated skipping dyeing eggs this year since we had so much going with hosting the family party, but Eliot would not have it! This and watching the movie "Hop" are two of his favorite traditions!

 I always loved getting a new dress at Easter when I was a little girl, and I adore dressing up my boys on Easter! These little blazer jacket and tie outfits I found were too irresistible! There were only a few left by the time I got to them, but they had my boys' sizes! Little pinstripe shirts, gold buttons, and bright green ties ... be still my heart!

 

 We were a wee bit late to church because of this photo shoot, but I knew I only had one chance at getting them with their entire ensembles in tact and hair freshly combed!

I really liked holding most of the festivities on Saturday, because it gave us the chance to make Sunday more relaxed and focused on Christ. Boiled eggs made for a quick breakfast, everyone's crashed out for naps as I type, and we will warm up some yummy leftovers for dinner. After dinner, we will do my favorite Easter activity, going on our "Easter Walk," based on this sweet book we received from my mother-in-law a few years back.

It's an active, interesting way to teach little ones about the true meaning of Easter, and the touching story makes me cry every time. I feel the power of the promise of the Resurrection every time we read it, and I love the opportunity it gives us as parents to testify of Christ and all that He has done and all that He means to us. Happy Easter, everyone! Hope yours was filled with joy!

You Tell on Yourself

My 5th grade teacher, Mrs. Cornell, is one of the people who most influenced my love of literature, especially poetry. She had a deep passion for poetry, and had us commit to memory several poems, and not just of the Shel Silverstein sort. Some of the ones I remember most are Joyce Kilmer's "Trees" (which runs through my mind every time I drive through Oregon and see the lush green skyline), Joaquin Miller's "Columbus" (her other great passion was American History, particularly the story of Columbus), along with several passages from the scriptures, including 2 Nephi 9:41, which we repeated together on our last day of class with her (I attended a private LDS elementary school, of which Mrs. Cornell was the director).  I attended her funeral a few summers ago, and it was a joy and a privilege to celebrate the life of such an amazing, bright, passionate woman, a woman who influenced so many lives through her great gift of teaching. It is a testament to her abilities and to the power of words, especially when joined with music or poetic verse, that over 20 years later, lines of the poems she taught me in her 5th grade classroom, still pop into my mind. This morning, I found myself thinking through the stanzas of this wonderful poem:

Tell On Yourself... 

You tell on yourself by the friends you seek, 

By the very manner in which you speak, 

By the way you employ your leisure time, 

By the use you make of dollar and dime. 



You tell what you are by the things you wear, 

By the spirit in which you your burdens bear; 

By the kind of things at which you laugh, 

By the records you play on the phonograph. 



You tell what you are by the way you walk; 

By the things of which you delight to talk, 

By the manner in which you bear defeat, 

By so simple a thing as how you eat. 



By the books you choose from the well-filled shelf, 

In these ways and more, you tell on yourself; 

So there's really no particle of sense 

In an effort to keep up false pretense. 

Jamie Sidwell

Coloring

We go through a lot of coloring pages at our house. Eliot didn't show interest in coloring for a long time, but over the past year or so, it has become one of his favorite indoor activities. And since Zach needs to be one of the big kids and do everything brother does, he recently wanted in on the action, too. I thought he'd do a couple scribbles and get bored, but no. He sat for almost a full half hour, switching out crayons and coloring happily away. He seemed to instinctively know that he's supposed to color where the images are and not just all over the page. Smarty pants.

 Why are little hands with chunky crayons so cute?!

I love this one of him lying on his tummy!

And then there's detail-oriented Eliot. I got him a giant box of crayons for Christmas, and he has become meticulous about color selection ... maybe to a fault. He got so upset about the notion of finishing a coloring project from preschool without the exact same crayons that Ms. Jen has, Ms. Jen gave him his own pack of "her" crayons to keep at home. And don't worry that his 96-count pack is organized by color (that's my boy!). 

 Disney Junior characters, especially Jake and the Neverland Pirates are some of our favorites!

 

I also love seeing Eliot's original drawings. This is one he brought home from church recently:

It's the story of the First Vision. See if you can follow the story from top left corner to bottom right corner: Joseph in the woods, the light appearing, Heavenly Father and Jesus appearing to him (top right corner, kind of hard to see, but Jesus has a red robe), then the darkness when they disappear, and then Joseph going to tell his dad what happened.

Some of my favorite times are when Eliot asks me to sit down and color with him (I do love to color!), and we sit side-by-side and work on our waxy masterpieces together. Every now and then I'll draw a word or two of praise from Eliot, and he'll ask me what I think of his work. So cute.

Provo Tabernacle Temple ... Unbelievable

Take a look at the most recent progress on the Provo City Center Temple ... this is unreal!

Thank goodness for a tall hubby! Since almost the entire site is fenced off with construction fencing, only Grant's height made this vantage point possible!

 

They have literally dug out underneath the old Tabernacle, and have the entire framework (now fortified from the inside by a cement layer -- you can see it through the windows) is supported on scaffolding. It is unbelievable, especially when you see it in person! I have been bugging Grant for months to make sure to tell me if anything new is happening at the construction site (the court in Provo is just a block away from the old Tabernacle, and I'm never down there ... so I'm counting on him for updates!), and he kept shrugging and saying there wasn't much going on. Then I saw this aerial shot
 the other day on Facebook of the supported structure, and Grant was in the dog house! (Not really. :) I am so grateful we were able to catch this in person before it gets filled in. It was a landmark point in the temple's progress, for sure!

 Nope, not tepees! In the northeast corner of the temple lot sit the spires (is that the right word?) to the original Tabernacle, which I'm guessing they're hoping to preserve. Again, amazing since you can see obvious  fire damage on most of them. Could this process be any more miraculous?!

Tracking the boys' growth as we watch the temple's progress! We were so glad the builders left a few gaps in the mostly covered-up construction fencing around the lot. It's kind of funny/scary to watch the heavy traffic on University Avenue slow in those couple spots so the passengers/drivers can catch a glimpse!

 Mom and Dad, too! Photo courtesy of Eliot.

We can't wait! But watching the process is pretty amazing!

I just marvel at this temple construction. The construction of any temple is a miracle, but this labor of love seems a little extra monumental! The effort the Church is going to in order to preserve this historical building is inspiring. I cannot imagine being the engineers and construction crew entrusted with this very delicate project. Every time I am on the site, I can't help but get teary-eyed. This place means so much to us, and this process is just incredible to be a part of! Here's an article detailing more specifics of the temple's construction.

The Boy's Got Moves

I have tried, but have been unable, to explain Zach's dance moves. You have to see it for yourself. I should also explain that Eliot's ape-like crawling around is him acting like Tarzan (since the music is from Tarzan). We love ourselves a little dance party from time to time ...