Easter 2015

I love this little family of mine so much and can't wait for sister to join us in a few short weeks! (36 weeks prego)

This was Austin's second Easter and it was a lot more fun now that he is old enough to understand what's going on. We started the festivities a week early at the Inspirada Community Easter Egg Hunt! We walked down to the pavilion with some neighbor friends and had a blast finding eggs and listening to the DJ play kiddie songs. Austin thought the DJ was awesome and stood there watching him in a trance for the longest time until the Easter Bunny caught his eye! He ran over to the photo booth where the Easter Bunny was busy taking pictures and went under the rope that was being used to hold back the crowd, determined to go see that bunny! We had to run after him, trying to push people out of the way before he interrupted the photo taking that was going on. The ironic part is we later waited in line for a half hour so Austin could properly meet the Easter Bunny and get a picture with him and that was when Austin suddenly chose to become shy and reserved and wouldn't look up from his feet! He let the Easter Bunny hold him but he wouldn't look up at him and wouldn't look at the camera either. He's such a funny kid. Everything has to be on his time table.

Once it came time to do some egg hunting, we spent most of the event teaching Austin how to find the eggs and put them in his basket. By the time he grasped the concept, there wasn't much left to find. But he didn't care! He was having too much fun opening up the handful of eggs he did find and discovering what was inside!

Afterwards we made the trek home and stopped at the park on our way, letting Austin get some more energy out on the playground. There just happened to be a political meet and greet luncheon going on so we got some BBQ out of it too! Score! By the time we made it home we were all exhausted and took a nap.

Discovering the goodies inside!

Daddy teaching Austin how it's done.

Finally getting the hang of it and searching for eggs on his own!

All worn out after all that fun in the sun!

Austin talked about the Easter Bunny all week after that and loved telling us about the eggs! It was the perfect prelude to the actual Easter day because he was now a professional at finding those eggs! Josh and I woke up Sunday morning excited to see Austin's face when he spotted his Easter basket and found ourselves instead waiting for the crazy kid to wake up! Of course he chose this particular morning to sleep in! By 9:15 we decided we should just go in and wake him up or he was never going to take a nap later on in the day! It was so crazy because he NEVER sleeps that late! The little sleepy head came downstairs and went to town on all the candy waiting for him and still has not put down the little magnet-drawing board that was in his basket!

Then we went outside and found all the eggs the Easter Bunny had hidden around the front yard. The bunny must have figured plastic eggs would suffice this year since Austin isn't quite old enough to handle the real thing yet (and his parents were too tired to deal with cleaning up egg dye). This was just fine with Austin as he opened every single egg before he dropped them into his  basket, shoving chocolate into his mouth as fast as he possibly could. We had to take the basket away from him soon afterwards because he would have eaten the entire thing if we would have let him! He was not very happy about that....

We hid eggs once more before it was time for breakfast and General Conference. We ate cinnamon rolls and hard boiled eggs but Austin hardly took a bite because he was so busy with his new drawing board. We spent the rest of the day as a family, relaxing and listening to Conference. It was the perfect day! So calm and fulfilling! We were all sad to see it come to an end. Before we put Austin to bed we sat in his room listening to him jabber on to us about all the fun he had. He kept saying, "fun! fun!" after every little story. His English is getting good enough for us to actually understand him speaking partial sentences! It is amazing listening to his vocabulary grow and hear him put proper phrases together! He cried for quite a while after we laid him down for bed because he didn't want all the fun to end. We couldn't blame him. We felt like crying ourselves when we thought about work the next day......

Happy Easter Everyone! We hope your day was just as full of love and happiness as was intended by our Savior the day he made the ultimate sacrifice for our salvation.