Easter

 Their Easter clothes.  Wyatt was being a little stubborn today.  And I love Lydia's bows!

The Easter bunny came to the Barnes house on Saturday morning.  For several reasons.  I didn't want the sugar high to happen right before we attended Sacrament meeting, I didn't want to have to pry them away from their toys when we just barely gotten them and we really wanted to keep an empahsis on the meaning of Easter and why we celebrate it for that Sunday.

 The kids each got their own chair and Easter basket.  They all got a Butterfly Habitat to share.  We are going to send away for the catepillers very soon so we can see them grow!

 Major candy haul!  I love doing their Easter baskets-I color code everything.  Lydia gets pink stuff, Wyatt gets blue and Aidan gets green! 

 Of course, Wyatt got lots of Thomas things.

 We also had a small Easter egg hunt with just us 5.  We have some cute plastic eggs in the shape of animals that we have had since Aidan's first Easter, so we filled those up and hid them in the backyard.  Thankfully, it was a beautiful day.

 Wyatt REALLY got into the Easter egg finding groove.

 My silly kids.  Lydia was NOT into the hunting, so she pretty much jumped on the trampoline while her brothers found her eggs.  She was, however, into the eating of the Easter egg candy.

 That night, we dyed eggs.  It was MESSY, but the kids loved every single second.  They kept wanted me to boil more eggs, but they don't like to eat hard boiled eggs, so it would just go to waste!  We need to think of something we can dye that wouldn't be a waste of food, because they could have painted for hours.

 I didn't want to stain their clothes, which is why everyone is stripped down to diapers (well, Aidan had his pants on, and Jeremy and I took the chance of getting dye on our clothes).

 The fruits of our labors.  They turned out really nice, I thought.

After the egg dying mess was cleaned up, we told the kids to get in their jammies and we were going to learn more about the reason we celebrate Easter.  We made Easter cookies.  Using scriptures, we made a cookie recipe (like meringue) that helped to illustrate what Christ went through.  We end the night by placing a sheet of cookies in a preheated oven and sealing it up with tape (to represent Jesus being sealed in the tomb).  No cookies are eaten.  The next morning, we removed the tape and talked about the Resurrection, as we ate the cookies.  It was a neat experience that I would like to repeat when the kids are a bit older.  Aidan got it, but the littles didn't.  We also watched Lamb of God before Church.  I was really glad we did the fun Easter stuff the day before.  It really brought the Spirit into our house and I think it made an impression on Aidan too.

After Church, we went out to the Barnes for our Easter dinner and egg hunt with them.  Again, Lydia did not get the egg hunt thing.  It was really beyond her, apparently.  So everyone just started to stick eggs in her basket, and she would say, "Ank Ooo!"  I think she got more eggs than everyone, even though she didn't do anything!

 She wouldn't even pick up this egg.  Silly little girl.

 Wyatt was EVERYWHERE!  He loved the egg hunts!  I am going to have to do that again this summer-some sort of hiding game.  He had a blast!

 Aidan had fun as well.  This was about half way through.  This was also his first year to be allowed to go with the big kids. 

We spread out all the eggs to give back to fill for next year (we were figuring there was about 750 eggs total!)  That was a whole lot of candy!