Easter Egg hunts, dying eggs, and Easter Sunday....lots of pics!

Here are a bunch of pictures of the recent holiday. What a wonderful day to celebrate and remember what Jesus has done for us. It is also a day for fun. Easter egg hunts (the city one a few weeks ago), coloring Easter eggs, and of course a nice new outfit for Ester Sunday. Ok, on to the pictures!

Here the kids are getting ready for the egg hunt...baskets are empty.Bethany hunting for eggs in the "3 & under" section.Abbigail and Andrew hunting in the 6-8 yr old section. Look closely, Andrew is behind Abbie in the black hooded jacket.Full baskets!

Coloring eggs...so much fun, and Mom only slightly freaks out about all the liquid that will permanently stain anything it touches. My counters have a slightly yellow hue in places due to the yellow splashing out...even the newspaper couldn't stop the stain! Each of the kids did 8 eggs...2 dozen total. Only one of the eggs met with an untimely death before becoming beautiful! But Bethany quickly ate up the "squishy" egg that she dropped on the counter and cracked the shell. Squishy eggs is one of my kids favorite snacks. One of my favorite part of coloring eggs is the beautiful paper towel left from the drying eggs...I think this is just so pretty!
Easter morning was very chilly, but the kids were excited to see what the Easter Bunny brought! The Easter Bunny found a really good deal on MP3 players. He was nice enough to load them up with all of the kids' favorite Veggie Tale music and kids' praise music. Silly me thought we might travel in quiet, not having to listen to the kids' music. However, now we don't hear a kid's song, now we hear three kids singing three different songs! They have fun, though, so that's important. It is so wonderful to hear my 3 year old singing "Shine, Jesus, Shine" and Andrew singing "Amazing Grace" And of course Abbigail sings just about anything!
Easter morning we attended the Sunrise service at 7:00. Bethany joined in saying the Lord's prayer. We say it each night, but she usually doesn't pray it out loud at church, but this morning she did...very loudly! So adorable! We had a yummy breakfast after the first service, then a fun Easter Egg hunt with our Sunday School friends. Then we had another worship service. One thing I love about Easter is that I get to take communion with my husband! Being the pastor, he communes by himself before the congregation communes, and I just wait for my turn like the rest of the congregation. However, on Christmas Day and Easter Day, I go up when he communes and I get to kneel with him, it makes me feel special and like a wife, not a single mom! The kids always go up with me, and they get so excited to be able to go up with Daddy! After church we had a yummy lunch of ham, potatoes, corn, and fresh bread. YUMMY, if I do say so myself! After a quick rest, and cleaning up the dishes, we headed out to Bazine. We decided to attend worship there with Warren. In all it was a very nice, though tiring day! What a wonderful thing to be able to attend not one, but three entirely different services to celebrate Jesus' resurrection! No wonder hubby was so busy, I thought he would just do one service, 3 times, but no, each one was completely different!
I hope and pray that all of you had a wonderful Easter, celebrating the wonderful things that Jesus has done for all of us. If any of my Wichita family is reading this and has pictures of the family gathering at my parent's place...I'd LOVE to see them! Email them to me, PLEASE!!!