Easter

We had a lovely Easter weekend.  Blythe was sick the whole week before, running a fever and feeling crummy, so we didn't do much until Friday.  Mikayla, on a day when she was feeling crummy earlier in the week, became, in her words, "a pinterest person," and she found all sorts of ways to decorate eggs.  So she came over on Friday afternoon and we decorate eggs several eggs.  She had read that you can use Kool-Aid to dye eggs, so we tried that.  The first picture are eggs in Kool-Aid, and with the exception of the yellow, it worked really well.  The colors were so bright, and it smelled good.

Mikayla also bought a tie-dye kit which was somewhat more labor intensive than just putting an egg in a bowl of dye.  We had to use a little dropper and squirt dye into small holes.  The results were cool, though the colors were not as bright.  We did regular dye from a kit with sparkles you could glue onto the eggs, but Mikayla had thought Blythe would really like doing sparklies, and by the time we got to those, the children had lost interest and it was me and Mikayla finishing up.  So no sparkling eggs.  We did, however, use tape to make designs on some of the eggs, and those turned out pretty well.  I liked the ones with white triangles. It was fun to be doing eggs, and fun to talk with my sister.

Look at these bright, fun eggs!

On Saturday afternoon, we gathered with the Barri en masse for dinner and an egg hunt.  The children were so excited to be hunting.  They had been talking about it for several days.  We were about thirty people, and it was really nice to visit and get caught up with family members we don't see all that often.  

These are the little cousins who were present and either hunting or hiding eggs.

When I gathered up the children for a picture, I said, "If you will cooperate, I will take one picture and you can go."

I thought it went well and that I got the picture in one.

When I actually downloaded, however, I discovered the Jonathan did not actually cooperate.  

Oh well.  He'll be recorded for all time with the grimace.

Back row big kids: Charlie, Annie, Jonathan, Tess

Middle row middle kids: Jace, Lydia, Micah

Front row little kids: Blythe, Brandt, Caleb, Scott

Easter Sunday was beautiful.  The weather was perfect, crisp, warm, sunny.  We had stake conference and I had been asked to speak.  I will post my talk separately, but because I needed to be on the stand at the stake center, and Kent, in his new capacity as our building's audio/visual guy needed to be engaged with transmission stuff, Mikayla and Guy agreed to deal with our children.  It is fun to have them in our ward now (they have moved into the condo where we lived before moving into our new house).

In the afternoon, we gathered with the DeMars for another delicious dinner, egg hunt, and fun family time.  Mikayla made a cute centerpiece for the table with all the fun eggs we had decorated.  I thought it turned out super cute.  

And speaking of super cute, all the DeMartini cousins cooperated, remarkably.

Everyone, all eleven of the children, look darling.

And isn't it especially sweet that Crew has his arm around Lyla?  

Love these little people!

 

Grandma Sue and Donovan

He is laughing at Blake.

And here are all of us, with the exception of Bryan and Missy.

We are grateful we live close to our extended family members.

Makes for regular fun times.

With the Coxes next door, we all went for an evening walk around the neighborhood.

It was so beautiful and nice to be together.

We were enough people that we made a scene.  

Two kids came riding by on scooters and asked, "What's going on?"

I replied, "It's a parade!"

They said, "Can we join?"

And they did.