Easter Morning

Here are the kids' Easter baskets lined up on Easter morning, and the kids were excited to run downstairs and see what they got.

 Sareny got a dress, Isaac got some basketball shorts and a shirt, Finley got some church shoes and a My Little Pony, and Keeley got a baby doll.

 Then the hunt was on.

 They scavenged around and found all the eggs pretty quickly.

Keeley even got in on the action, although she would just pick up an egg and walk around with it for a while.

Then I lined the kids up for a picture with their baskets, although Rhys didn't want to be in the picture.

And for some reason, Sareny was wearing my glasses that morning. Good thing my prescription isn't very strong. After church and an Easter dinner of ham, the Ronquillos headed over to the East side of town and back to Chicargo.

Easter

We had a really nice Easter this year. The kids got to inspect their baskets in the morning before we headed out to church. The Easter bunny gave each of them an adorable outfit, along with some candy. Since we have to leave our house at 8:00 to get to our building for 8:30 church, the Easter egg hunt had to wait until we got back, but the kids were certainly scoping out the hidden eggs before we left.

I like to take a picture of the kids on Easter Sunday, but the above picture wasn't so fabulous. We tried again when we got home, but the results weren't much better.

And then the hunt was on.

In addition to the regular eggs, they each got to find two special golden eggs that had a dollar in it.

There were quite a few eggs hidden!

Then we colored Easter eggs.

Everybody had lots of fun making their eggs special.

Lexi, of course, made some eggs as well before she had to head of to her late church.

Cute kids!

Easter Morning

Okay, here is the promised Easter post! We had a pretty awesome Easter this year. Especially good was this year's chocolate Easter bunnies.

Last year, after taking a bite of a rather sub-par chocolate Easter bunny, Sareny asked why the Easter bunny brought them yucky candy. The Easter bunny has a long memory, and made sure to improve the taste this year. He solicited the help of an expert candy maker he knows, who molded these cute bunnies filled with delicious caramel. Much better than last year!

Here are the Easter baskets before the mayhem began.

The kids checking out their baskets. Apparently the Easter bunny is not aware that gum is frowned upon in our house.

Then the hunt began. There were some tricky eggs, and each kid got a special golden egg with a dollar coin in it. Isaac spotted the trickiest egg of all.

Daddy helped Sareny get it down. We couldn't figure out how the Easter bunny managed to get the egg up there.

The aftermath.

The girls both got little cabbage patch babies, and Isaac got a megablocks Mack truck, which you can see on the floor behind the girls.

This next picture just seems so bizarrely artistic, I had to include it. I was trying to take a picture of the girls, and at the last minute Isaac stuck his cotton candy in front of the camera.

I love this one too. It just kind of says it all.

 

 

Easter Eggs

We colored Easter eggs the Friday evening before Easter. I had boiled 3 and a half dozen eggs, and Keith thought I must have been doing eggs for an entire army or something, but I knew we needed that many! (I just have to point out that every single egg did end up getting eaten, so there! Boo-yeah!)

The kids showing off their faves.

Don't you just love Finney's mouth-wide-open grin? That's how she's started smiling lately, and I could just eat her up I love her so!

And here is the whole collection! It's kind of a tradition in my family that my dad makes a brown egg each year. I told Keith he needed to make a brown one, but he declined. Fortunately, Isaac stepped up and made a brown one, which he later picked out as his favorite. Quite surprising, since he absolutely loves blue.

So I was thinking the other day how sometimes our blog makes our life look more spectacular than it really is. Take this post for example. A lovely family having a great time coloring eggs. Well, here is the rest of the story.
Finley quickly got the hang of egg decorating, and started lunging and grabbing every egg within her reach, and plopping it into the nearest cup of dye, whether it had an egg in it or not. She was going through eggs way too fast, and clambering up on the table in her haste to get more eggs, which, of course, is not a good idea with 12 cups of egg dye just waiting to get knocked over. Keith told her she needed to wait for the eggs she put in cups to finish before she got another one, and she threw a royal temper tantrum. She had to be removed from the party for a while.
I had an entire cup of blue dye dumped into my lap. I was a little angry, and I think I could have probably been a little nicer. It's kind of hard to think of things like that, however, when you're on your hands and knees scrubbing blue dye out of the tile, grout, and off the tables and chairs, while your favorite pair of jeans is soaking in the sink, your youngest daughter is still carrying on with her tantrum, and your oldest daughter who just drenched you in dye seems more concerned with her egg than the mess and possibly ruined pants...You get the idea.
So while our life is far from perfect, I love these little kiddos. I'm so glad we get to spend so much time together, even if part of it does involve prying tightly clenched little fingers from my hair, or buckling a screaming child into a carseat while she is kicking and screaming bloody murder, or driving children to and fro all day long, or deciphering incoherent cries, or any number of mundane, and seemingly trivial tasks. A lot of those moments don't make it onto my blog, but in a strange way, I enjoy those moments too.

A final post about Easter weekend

Sunday after church, my parent's friends and neighbors the Jones' walked over with their little dog Yogi. My kids thought that was the coolest thing ever!

They had so much fun running around and playing with her.

They ran around with her so much that Yogi got tired out and needed to rest. Regretfully, this didn't translate into my children being tired and wanting to go to bed.

I've had people tell me that my kids need a dog, but if we had a dog of our own, it wouldn't be such a novelty when they get to play with one. Plus also, I don't actually have to clean up poop or any of the other pleasantries associated with having a dog. (Yes, I did mean to write plus also, if you've read Junie B. Jones, you would understand.)
Rhys was so funny--Yogi jumped up and licked his toes and he giggled and laughed. When she came back over, he lifted his foot up to her.

Finley didn't have bare toes so she didn't get that thrill, but I made her touch the doggie too.

We love this handsome little man!

We also celebrated Lexi's birthday, and Sareny was so excited to give her a card she made, along with some perfume that she had carefully selected out of her own belongings. I thought this was actually quite a sacrifice, since she loves wearing "frume," and she only had the one bottle. We also gave her a Build-a-Bear gift certificate, and we are all going to go and make bears! Sareny made a bear named "Kelly Clarkson" for her fourth birthday, and Grammy Jo and I kept trying to convince her to choose outfits and accessories that we liked, but Sareny was stubborn and had her own tastes. That's when we decided we needed to go back and make our very own bears.

We took this sissie's picture after Jake and Lizzie had already left to go home, so it has almost all of the girls. Pictured is Lexi, Holli, Cassidy, and Hillari

Easter Sunday Finery

I like to take pictures of the kids every year on Easter Sunday. Since we were running late to church, we had to slip out between Sacrament and classes to snap a few in front of the Overton church. (yikes!)

Grammy Jo, Bampa, Holli Jo, and Rhys came outside after I had taken the older kids to Primary, so only the babies got a grandparent picture.