One of my best Easters ever

From a letter to my LDS women's group:

We had a great day. My son's wife just arrived from Idaho with her father and a truck with all their belongings (not dad's--he goes back to Idaho on Tuesday), so we had them over for dinner. In addition, dh's niece moved here a few months ago, so she got an invitation as well. We didn't do a traditional ham, but had a big pan of homemade macaroni and cheese, asparagus, salad, and rolls, with carrot cake for dessert.

Dh and I love living in Tucson and our only regret is that we live so far from our other family members. Other than my mom who lives with us, the nearest family has been in Los Angeles, 8 hours away, then Idaho and Florida. So far away. Then! Dh wanted to hire his niece to work for him and it was a good time for her to leave Pocatello, Idaho and move here. Then! David and Alicia got tired of fighting Jerome, Idaho weather and decided to move here. I don't know who else might move here, but just having those three young adults living in town has made me so happy. Being able to have family over for dinner has been a dream of mine for years and finally I'm able to do it.

My brother and his fiancee from Florida also came for a short weekend visit and I was surprised to find out she is his fiancee now and not his girlfriend only. There is no date, but there is a fabulous engagement ring.

Sacrament meeting was one of my all-time Top Five sacrament meetings. Since our ward was recently split, we haven't had a choir, so I was surprised to see folks sitting in the choir loft when I came in. It turns out we imported the ward choir from the other ward in our old building to perform for us. In addition to our own Primary children, the choir sang 2 pieces, the choir women sang another, a quartet sang, and 2 soloists sang. One soloist sang an unfamiliar piece called (I think) "Were You There?" that nearly brought me to tears. There were three short talks about Christ and the atonement interspersed with the music.

In the early evening we had an egg hunt outside for the girls. It was one of my best Easters ever.

 

King Cake

Mardi Gras again already?  I don't celebrate it, but didn't want to miss a chance to bake something delicious.

It didn't turn out exactly the way it was supposed to (didn't read the part of the instructions that say to let it raise after forming and before baking, although that's always the way you make yeast dough products), but I'll have to say it is very tasty.

I made two, so my book club ladies will get the other one tomorrow.  Oh, I found the baby in the cake so I guess I'll plan to make another cake next year. :-)

Easter egg hunt, part 2

As Kevin said, "Every good Easter egg hunt has at least one missing egg." The wind blew hard today and it must have blown this plastic egg off our concrete block fence. It does seem familiar now . . . .

Caroline was the one waiting to find it, so the hunt is finally over.

Easter egg hunt

This morning we went to Church and had wonderful talks about Christ's resurrection and his atonement for our sins. Repentence is a wonderful gift from him to us.

In the late afternoon we had an Easter egg hunt in the back yard.

We ended up with a lot more eggs than I expected, so there were eggs, Peeps, and chocolate bunnies everywhere!

There was a small gift hidden for each girl as well.

Even Bill found two eggs. It's possible he checked under a warm hen.

There is still at least one missing. I wonder when we'll find it?

Carrots and Bunnies

I made a super-easy carrot cake today:

Betty Crocker carrot cake mix + ingredients called for on the package
4 spears of fresh pineapple, finely chopped
1 cup California walnuts, chopped

Combine all ingredients except the walnuts and mix according to the package directions. Pour into a 9x13 pan and bake according to the package directions.

Icing:

4 oz cream cheese (mine was fat-free)
1/2 stick of margarine or butter
Powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla

Beat the cream cheese and margarine or butter very thoroughly. Add powdered sugar a little at a time. I didn't need to add any extra milk, but you can if necessary. Add vanilla and beat to mix. Continue beating on high speed another minute or two, until the color lightens a little.

Frost cake.

Put Peeps all over the top.

Easter Pictures

Today the girls finally got to wear their new dresses and new shoes outside for the first time. This picture shows the dresses although no one is actually looking at the camera!
Here is my favorite because they all have such cute expressions on their faces. Dh had them make silly faces, then I caught this one.

I thought having fast and testimony meeting on Easter would be kind of the pits, but it was nice. I liked hearing the ward members (members of my congregation) express their love and gratefulness for Christ's death and resurrection and for His atonement.

After church we came home to a delightful ham dinner. We had ham, mashed potatoes, cranberries, fresh bread with butter, then a mincemeat crumble for dessert. I just now remembered I forgot to prepare the asparagus I got a couple of days ago. No problem, we'll just have it with the leftovers.

I love Fridays!

Next weekend Holly is getting married and ds1 and his wife along with her parents and two brothers are going to stay with us. My ds2 is also going to be here as well. As long as a bunch of teen and young adult guys don't mind sleeping on couches, we have plenty of room. This room below, however, was in need of a bit of straightening. It's a small room that has been used most recently by Holly and also for storage as you can see. Since we are moving soon I didn't want to do too much with the boxes, but they really couldn't stay where they were.

Here's the other part of the room. It is adjacent to the girls' playroom so the guest room has been played in extensively and there was all kinds of "stuff" all over it. The part that took me the longest was putting several games back together after they were taken out and the parts mixed. Let's just say Cranium has a lot of parts. I should have taken an "after" picture but I forgot. The room is plain, and there is a certain pile of boxes under the window, but it is very clean now and will be fine for ds1 and his wife. Her parents are going to have S's room because it has a trundle bed in it. I moved the toddler bed that was on the left side of the picture below back into the big girls' room where it used to be before we gave S her own room. She insisted on sleeping there tonight as I figured she would.

Holly was over with her wedding dress for me to alter a bit. It's a size 6 but honestly, it could have been worn by a 6' woman and still have dragged on the floor a bit. I ended up serging off about 6" of the underskirt, then pinned the lower part of the skirt up to match how the upper part came from the manufacturer. This seems to be in style right now. After I pinned it up we sat on the couch and chatted while we both tacked the skirt up each place I'd pinned. We managed to get it short enough (along with her 4" heels!) to not have to cut the outer layer.

She tried it on over her camisole. Won't she make a pretty bride?

I couldn't miss an opportunity to post a picture of my little darlings, could I?

After all that it was time to color Easter eggs. I think we did them two years ago and the girls didn't really get into it so I was wondering how they'd do this time. I wish I'd had more than the seventeen eggs I had boiled! We had our neighbor over and each one had four eggs to color and I had one. On the other hand, everyone was satisfied, so maybe it was just the right number. I'll have to say most of them were cracked by the time they were settled back into the cartons to dry. :-)

It was a fun day. I love Fridays.

Easter basket for Zachariah

I've never been a fan of overboard Easter gifts and baskets. Our Easter celebration consists of . . . remembering Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection. Imagine that! Okay, and we usually color some eggs and have an egg hunt with those eggs, some plastic ones with treats inside, and some candy. Depending on the weather the hunt is in the back yard or in the living room.

HOWEVER, this is my first Easter to have a grandson so I decided to make a little basket for him. Since I have no sense of decorating and creativity, it is rather plain, but, I hope, practical. Don't most Easter baskets have disposable diapers in them? LOL