Easter 2014, Part Deux

It's funny to me to think about that before Chris and I had children, Easter wasn't even on our radar. We don't do any type of special celebration for it at church, and since we didn't have kids, we would often not even know it was Easter until the actual day.

Well, things are different now! During the past several years, we have celebrated with Chris's side of the family the day before, as well as our friends Ross & Tia on the day of. And of course, I've had to think about Easter baskets and such so it is a much "bigger" holiday for us now.

Brianna looked so pretty on Easter! I love our tradition of taking her photo in this rocking chair, but it won't be too many more years before she outgrows it *tear*.

It was a very cloudy/rainy morning, so the lighting in our living room was no good. Because of this, I tried to take a few photos outside as well. I was thrilled to get three good photos from our girl that tends to be very difficult to photograph!

And because I love comparison photos, here are pictures of Brianna from 2013 and 2014. Her little face is growing up!

Brenson is my easy kid to photograph. He looked SO handsome!

Love this little man!

His comparison photo just about brought tears to my eyes. I mean really, is this only one year's difference??? He was such a baby last year.

Our biggest challenge is always getting photos of both kids together. I had told them that they wouldn't get their Easter baskets unless they posed and smiled nice for photos, and {shockingly} it worked!

My sweet babies :-).

Here are their Easter baskets from this year. They aren't huge baskets, and I have a rule that everything they get must fit in the basket. It's so easy to get completely out of control with gifts, so I have to give myself limits!

Brianna's basket:

Brenson's basket:

We had them go into Brianna's room to wait while I put the baskets out. They were SO eager to see what this Easter basket business was all about.

These photos are blurry/no good but I love the expressions on their little faces! Precious!

This is a precious shirt I had my sister make for Brianna . . . love Matryshka dolls!

Brenson's shirt is super cute as well! And he LOVES it!

Haha! Mind blown?

After opening Easter baskets, we went to church services (like we do every Sunday). For the past several years, we've had a tradition of going to a "brunch" with our friends, Ross & Tia, at their golf club, then an egg hunt at their house. This year, our reservations for lunch/brunch weren't until 1:00pm, so we decided to go to their house and do the egg hunt first. It ended up not working out well for several reasons. One was that their baby, Sadie, had fought sleep all morning and was over tired/over stimulated. So Tia ended up staying inside with her trying to get her to sleep AND skipping lunch. Boooo :-(. It's so hard with littles, especially when their needs come first, but hopefully next year will be better! A second reason that it didn't work out as well was that our egg hunt ended up being rushed in order for us to make it to lunch on time. And of course, the kids were hungry during the egg hunt, so hopefully it will all work out better next year.

Despite all this, the kids did have fun hunting eggs!

I love photos of them running to get the eggs!

We had so many eggs - too many really - so all the kids got a basketfull.

Some of the eggs were "hidden" in interesting places . . . I'm pretty sure none of the kids could reach this one!

Brenson proudly showing off his find.

Chloe Jo's handle is about to break on her basket!

We've tried to get a photo of these three for the past three years on Easter, and this is the first time we've ever been successful. I guess that means they are growing up!

Our family:

Our kids were hungry . . . that's the reason for the long faces.

My sister's family:

Sweet Sadie was inside this whole time NOT sleeping. Bless her heart!

Isn't she so pretty?

Ross did come to lunch with us, but it just wasn't the same without Tia.

After lunch, the club also had an egg hunt. So, of course, our kids HAD to participate! This is actually a really pretty view of the skyline, but it was hard to see due to the clouds.

Something new at the club this year was that they had set up a little petting zoo. For most kids, this would be fun, but both Chloe Jo and Brenson were scared of the animals, ha!

It took a lot of convincing to get CJ to touch this one for the photo!

Same for Brenson!

They even let the kids come in the pen with them if they wanted. As you can see in the photo, Bren is trying to bail out but Brianna was loving being in there with the animals. Next year, however, that won't be happening! We ended up finding TWO little ticks on her back after we got home and changed our clothes for nap time. We had thoroughly checked her the night before because we had been out on Chris's parents' land and ticks are always a risk out there, so we really think they came from crawling in the pen with the animals. Ick!

Easter is such a fun holiday for us now! We love the traditions we have with our family and our friends who are family. We are incredibly thankful for the good memories!