I Heart Faces- Smiles!

This week the theme over at I Heart Faces is Smiles! I definitely needed a theme like that this week- Sam has been having a rough couple days, Jack came down with a mysterious fever, and Dave's grandma passed away this weekend so we're dealing with everything that comes with that. And thus, I've not really been in a very smiley mood lately. This theme came with perfect timing because looking through all the entries is helping to cheer me up a bit!

With all that's going on I haven't been able to take a new picture for this week's theme, nor have I had a lot of time to go through the photos I already have, so I took a quick glance at my portfolio and pulled out my favorite 'smile' photo in there

Don't forget to head on over to I Heart Faces to check out the rest of the entries... especially if you could use some cheering up, yourself!

Jesus And Jelly Beans

He Is Risen! (I was going to use that as my post title but I realized I used it last year! Still, I can't not say it!)

Easter Sunday was such a fun day! I was extra excited this year because it was Sam's first Easter, and this year Jack was old enough to actually start to understand the real meaning behind Easter: Jesus' death and resurrection. He still doesn't quite get the why and the what for about it, but he knew that all of our fun celebrating was about Jesus even if he felt more excited about celebrating the jelly beans.

First on the agenda that morning: Easter "Sunrise" Service... at 10:00am! Our church service takes place at 5:30pm on normal Sundays, so to us, 10:00am is early! Dave and I got the boys dressed and headed on over. Upon exiting the car I paused in order to take the opportunity to take pictures of the boys, of course, in front of the beautiful view. Our "Sunrise" Service is held in the front yard of a home in PV- what better way to enjoy an Easter service than to be outdoors enjoying creation by overlooking the ocean!

After church we headed home to hunt for the eggs that the "Easter Bunny" left in the backyard! My parents and my sister and baby Luke came over again to join in the hunt! After Jack investigated the goodies in Sammy's and his Easter baskets (and he insisted that Sam wanted to share the choo choo train that was in his basket!), Jack and Luke got ready to hunt! Okay, so Luke really didn't do much hunting, but Jack totally enjoyed himself since there was no competition for eggs and he could go as slowly as he wanted to! Next year, he'll have two little boys to share them with, as Luke and Sam will be old enough to participate!

Jack got 48 eggs, and Luke got 2. I think that Luke was completely satisfied with his 2 eggs.

After our egg hunt, we headed over to Auntie Sandra's house, as usual! We love going to her house for holidays, and Jack gets very excited when I tell him that we get to go to Nana's house! Pretty soon, Sam will, too!

Jack was thrilled when Grandmother Eileen (Auntie Sandra's mother-in-law... she's like a bonus grandma and we love her) gave him a white chocolate bunny! He started getting very silly and making funny faces as he ate it!

And then it was time for the Easter Egg hunt! We hunt for real eggs (the ones we had dyed the day before) at Nana's house. Jack is allergic to eggs, though, so they didn't hold any great draw for him. Once he realized that these eggs were not plastic and full of candy like the ones that the "Easter Bunny" left at our house, he lost interest.

After the Egg hunt we attempted to get a picture of all the great-grandkids together with Grammy... Emmaleigh and Luciano were the only ones that were cooperating, though, and that's because at 13 and 6 1/2 they were the oldest! Even Sam didn't want to cooperate, as he was having a hard time sleeping through all that racket! It's no surprise that Jack was more interested in playing with the cars than he was in having his picture taken. He's always more interested in anything else than he is in having his picture taken.

There is no better way to celebrate the Resurrection than together with family, and I am so excited for the day when my boys will be able to fully understand the reason that we are celebrating! For He is risen, just as He said!

He is risen indeed! Hallelujah!

Caught Blue-Handed

Easter kind of snuck up on me this year. I don't mean that I was unprepared for it- I had done my shopping weeks in advance and had everything all ready to go for the big day. It snuck up on me in the sense that I had forgotten all about one of the most fun-for-kids parts of Easter preparation: Dying Easter Eggs! Luckily I was reminded of this fun event (thank you, facebook!) just in time to make it to the grocery store to get some eggs and make it back home to boil them! I mean it when I said I had prepared... I already had the egg dye at home hiding with the other Easter stuff I had bought... but you can't buy eggs too far in advance. Dave will eat them. And he makes fun of me if I label things with DO NOT EAT, but he will eat something if it's not labeled. Labeling probably wouldn't help, anyway. Especially since going out of my way to tell him that the eggs were for coloring didn't even save them... he ate one before they even made it to the dye!

I love that man ;)

Anyway... of course I invited Baby Luke to join us, along with my sister, brother, mom and dad and Grammy, too! As soon as they got here we got started. Jack is very into recipes and following directions and instructions, so this year I decided that I would let him help me prepare the colors rather than just plopping the colors down in front of him. I set up the table in the backyard, filled the glasses with the right amount of water, and then had him help me measure the vinegar and drop the colored tabs into the glasses and let him stir the water to dissolve the tabs.

That took For.E.Ver. Next year I am going to experiment beforehand to see which brands of egg dye dissolve faster, because I ended up getting a knife from the kitchen to break up the tabs into tiny pieces, and even then they still didn't fully dissolve until we were halfway done! That's a long time for an almost-3 year old to wait!

Sammy was too tired (and too little) to help, and Luke was much more likely to eat the dye than use it to color eggs, so they mostly just sat on the sidelines being adorable along with Grammy's Lucy.

Jack cracked me up when he was dropping the eggs (very carefully!) in the dye... he'd totally flinch every time he dropped an egg in the dye! I remembered that he had done that same thing last year, but I still don't know why. Either he was afraid that he'd break the egg and somehow felt that flinching would prevent the egg from breaking? Or maybe he was flinching because he was afraid that the splash would be huge and he'd get dye all over the place...? I have no idea, but it was pretty cute and pretty funny :)

He did really well with the little wire egg-carrier-thingie.

After a little bit, though, I told him that it was okay for him to use his hands.

As it turns out, not only did this particular dye set take For.E.Ver to dissolve in the water/vinegar, it also stains.

A lot.

When he was done coloring his eggs, he admired his handiwork, and then I had him dump out the dyes into the rocks on the side of the house.

Luke wandered over

And watched Jack and grandma put stickers on the colored eggs

And we were done!

After we colored eggs, no one was quite ready to leave yet so we hung out and played in the backyard! Grandpa had come over right as we were finishing with the eggs, so he and Jack practiced "jumping" off the stump in the backyard (yes I realize that shirt is waaay too small for him- he had never worn it and I wanted to protect the shirt that he had been wearing from the egg dye, so grabbed this one).

We all gathered around Luke to try to capture his first words on video(which, much to his mommy's disappointment, was not 'mama' but was 'Uncle Travis'), and I, of course, tried to get him to say 'Aunt Becca' as his second words

And then Jack and his blue hand showed Luke how to go down the slide

Luke showed us how he was so close to learning to crawl

Jack showed us that he was getting way too big for this teeny tiny slide

And Sammy was very comfortable on Grammy, and so he continued to sleep

And by the way, the blue did come off Jack's hand! He took an extra long bath that night just to make sure!