easter weekend

easter weekend was so much fun. Most importantly because branden got home from work saturday morning and didn't return until monday morning. did you hear that??? forty-eight hours without work. 48! that is the longest (besides his five day break in January) since July. Whew. that boy works hard.

on saturday, we stained our deck. i love my special helper.


she especially likes painting in the places we're not supposed to be painting. I especially loved that the stain we used- a lovely burnt orangey red color- stained my feet, arms, and speckled all over my forearms and ankles so that I look like I had a really bad self tanning job for two days. yikes.

on sunday morning the easter bunny came and dropped off easter baskets. I got the baskets from target and find them utterly adorable. And since we're moving it T-minus 3 months, they recieved a book with each basket. Which, they love, if I do say so myself. (and as a bonus they are two of my most favorite illustrated books ever- Fanny and Annabelle, and Princess and Fairy...)


then we had an easter egg hunt in our backyard that is not usually scattered with debris. But first they had to make it down the hill.



I'll help you Ellie!


Oops- sorry!

Here, I'll help you again,




don't fall down Ellie, it's just a hill!




Fine- I'll just pull you down- don't you know there's candy at the bottom of this thing??



and finally Ellie realized why Savannah was so eager to make it down the hill. Lots of pieces of grass to play with.



but savannah, she went for those eggs and filled her little tutu basket to the brim.



Then we went inside and the mean mother that I am, I gave them each one piece of candy, and when they retreated to the playroom, I took all of those eggs and hid them in the garage. I know. Terrible. But she hasn't asked about them since, so I'm not feeling too badly.

Perhaps because she decorated real eggs with Nana and then we used those real eggs to make a delicious carrot cake.
which we took over to the Jacksons (thanks Jacksons!) to watch conference, enjoy an easter feast, and partake of another easter egg hunt. Ellie even got the hang of it the second time around. While all the big kids had to wait at the top of the stairs, little miss E wandered around the grass collecting eggs and then spent the entire egg hung pleading to whoever passed by to open the candy wrapped up inside- ep peese! ep peese! (help, please!)

all in all it was a wonderful, fantastic, fun filled weekend!

(our best attempt at a family picture)

we missed you family from afar!!