Easter Came Early

So...we did some Easter activities that we don't usually do this year. For one...we went to the town Easter egg hunt on Saturday morning. It was one of those B.Y.O.B (bring your own basket) things and join us for crafts and all and the fire department flew the Easter Bunny in in a helicopter. Well, it sounded like a fun morning, so we headed out for the big event. Let me tell you...Easter egg hunts in Arizona are WAY different than egg hunts back east. For one...there really isn't any real hunting, so to speak. Not a lot of grass or foliage here....so it makes the "hiding" of eggs pretty much not happening. In Florida, we would spend hours carefully hiding plastic eggs...in tall grass, behind rocks, in potted plants, in bushes. So the Arizona egg hunt consisted of several volunteers holding large cardboard boxes full of eggs walking out into the middle of this big, barely grassy field (the grass is about maybe 1/4" high) and just dumping out all the eggs onto the ground. Then they blow a whistle and shout "Go!" and all way too many kids go rushing out onto the field and snatch the eggs all up and run with them. It was a VERY interesting experience. I must say..the whole "hunt" lasted about 20 seconds. Needless to say, our kids were NOT impressed wi the Arizona egg hunting. I tried to make it better by buying eggs and hiding them here in our yard. But first of all..Arizona yards are tiny. Second of all, Arizona yards do not have grass or much foliage at all, so hiding eggs is tricky. Basically, I dropped eggs into my two pots of pansies and shoved some in our mailbox...other than that...I just had to try to hide them on the rocks and about. And those bright pink and yellow eggs just kind of stick right out there against the brown drab rocks. Again...not much of a hunt so to speak. Even still, we managed to do it like about a hundred times! So after all the festivities of the day we put the kids to bed, watched a movie and went to bed ourselves somewhere around the midnight hour. Then, at the very, very, VERY early hour of 4:51 a.m. I wake to find Ben at my bedside telling me that the Easter Bunny has visited and left goodies in everyone's basket. I said "That's great, Ben. Now go to bed." So he goes to his room, wakes up Max and then BOTH of them are sitting at the kitchen table at 5 a.m., right outide our bedroom door, eating Skittles and jellybeans and comparing Easter baskets. So Easter came extra early to our house today. On the bright side, everyone was ready in PLENTY of time for church this morning!

On another Easter note...the service at church was BEAUTIFUL this morning. We enjoyed it SO much. The orchestra was phenomenal and the choir did an amazing job. We are enjoying the traditional aspect of this church SO much. We really feel as though we may have finally found a church home here. We will see how things go, but right now this church feels so right for us. And for this, I am SO thankful. We have been searching for a church home since we got here in December...and after much prayer, this is a real gift. All in all our day was a gift and a blessing. Chris and I had an unprecedented amount of time together and we both just soaked it up and enjoyed each and every moment of it. It was a day for reflecting on the resurrection of our Saviour and for counting the blessings that the Saviour has so generously given us. Today was a good day...no. Today was a GREAT day.