Easter

This year our Easter is very different because me and Anika are flying from Fargo tomorrow, on Easter Sunday at 6am.  That means we have to leave our house around 2am so we are going to start our long trip being tired. :) But that's ok because I'm thinking no matter what we'll be tired so what's a few more hours thrown in there.  But nevertheless, it makes it hard to celebrate Eater tomorrow as a family so we did our little Easter celebration today.

It's been weeks now that we have been talking and reading about the real meaning of Easter and it was so great to talk about Jesus daily and His life here on Earth.  I really hope our children understand that and the huge sacrifice that was done for them.  It brought up some good conversations with Kade and Anika I think is trying to grasp the meaning of death more at this age.  It is cute to listen to her and Emily talk about Easter and Jesus dying for them.  They were talking about him being in heaven and preparing a place for them so that when they die they can be with him.  At one point one of them said that after we die it's ok because we come back to life like Jesus. :)  I had to smile at that and tried to tell them we won't be walking around the Earth like before and we'll just be enjoying Heaven with God.  But I think they get the point about dying because to us it is just the beginning of forever after, the life here is just a blink of an eye and nothing that happens here or nothing we have here will matter in the end.

Anyway, we couldn't miss the traditional Easter egg hunt so we went to Ehren's parents to kind of celebrate Easter together, even though it was early.  Some people just give their kids big Easter baskets and since I kind of refuse to do both because our kids don't need more stuff, we usually just do the plastic egg hunt.  We fill them with treats, once in a while a tiny toy if I find it or else each child has to find their "price" that is hiding along with the eggs.  Our kids get so excited about this and usually weeks after Easter they still want to hide empty plastic eggs and try to find them around the house or wherever.  Growing up my parents hid the Easter basket (one for all of us) in our apartment but to me that's not as exciting as looking for dozens of eggs, especially since it's not very hard to find a big basket lying around.

So here are some pictures from today.  I just got back home and Kade and Kason are staying overnight at Mark and Audrey's.  It broke my heart to say good bye, especially to Kade because he cried so hard.  He really didn't want me to go and it was so hard to see as a mom.  Poor Kason didn't understand what was going on, he doesn't understand how far I'm going or how long I'll be gone.  In a way it's easier on him that way because Kade is very sad.  So I'm going to finish packing and cry some more and hopefully sometime in the next 24 hours when I'm up in the air I can start getting excited to see my family.  It's been way too long since I've been home and I am really looking forward to seeing everyone.

the rabbit cake I made

getting ready for the hunt

cousins - Emi and Ani are so cute together

the gang