Easter Sunday

Easter Sunday, we dressed up for church in coordinating outfits I picked out. Joshua & Daddy wore their yellow shirts with light blue stripes, Caleb had a blue striped shirt with a yellow, white & blue sweater vest, and I wore a light blue floral sundress with a yellow sweater over it. At the last minute, we invited my Dad to go to church with us and to my surprise he accepted the invitation. So, we piled into our car with Shawn back between the boys to head to church, LCBC's Liberty Place campus in Lancaster City. Joshua woke up cranky and was not thrilled until after he got to class. The sermon was on helping the least of these from Matthew, and we're starting the next sermon series on "More Than This" based on the book "A Hole in the Gospel" by Rick Warren, President of World Vision.

After we got home from church, I started working on setting the table and preparing the food while Shawn helped watch the boys and get ready for hosting my side of the family for Easter lunch. I was amazed that everyone arrived right at 1 pm (they're notoriously late) and the pineapple stuffing wasn't quite ready. That worked out okay, though, because Aunt Becky & Uncle Tim and some of the older kids went downstairs to play Wii until the food was ready.

Soon enough it was time to eat. We feasted on ham, extra good mashed potatoes, pineapple stuffing, green bean casserole and rolls. Everything was delicious. After we cleared the table, the men went outside to hide the 100+ plastic eggs on the playground behind our house while us gals waited with the kiddos. We ended up walking slowly around the front of the houses and singing songs until the eggs were all ready. We also stopped to take a few pictures to give the men more time to find good hiding spots for all the various ages.

The kids were allowed to run to Grandpa & stop for directions...

Grandpa said that the ones in the grass next to the playground should be saved for the boys (since there are three older girls and four younger boys). Then he said "GO!" and the kids were off to the races!

Joshua started in the grass since no one went there. I think he cleaned up in that area!

Caleb, in the meantime, followed his older cousins to the playground equipment. Grandpa Georgia laughed at him trying to get one of the 'harder' ones he had hidden for the older girls behind the slide.

Even little non-walking John got an egg!

Joshua was having a blast picking up eggs, as were all the kids. I didn't get a ton of pictures of the older ones since I was trying to snap a few of my kiddos. They were all fast!

The guys did a good job of spreading the eggs all over the playground, which is a big area.

We assume the eggs were all found. There were too many to count!

After the egg hunt was finished, we went back to the house for dessert, which included strawberry pie and ice cream, coffee & hot tea. Thereafter we continued to talk until folks started to leave, which ended up being late in the afternoon. Until we got cleaned up, it was just about supper time.

We had a nice Easter, but I was beat until I had everything cleaned up and the third load of dishes finished in the dishwasher. We were glad to have family over to enjoy the day with, though. Here we all are:

Happy Easter 2010!