Happy Easter!

What a joyous Easter we've had today! It was a bright, sunny, perfect day. Grammie and Grandpa Ward came down from Norththern Viriginia on Saturday and we had such a wonderful time together (can't even think about moving so far away!). The girls loved getting dressed up in their Easter dresses and even seemed to understand the true meaning of the holiday. This is not to say that they were not also thrilled about the Easter bunny coming, but it was nice to see them catching on a bit. Mark gave a nice little family devotional this morning and then when we went to look outside at the signs of rebirth in the yard. It was nice to see that the girls seemed to get the parallels on some level.

Before church, Millie wanted to take Abby through the woods up the hill behind our house to say "Happy Easter" to our neighbors. Millie has taken pains to cultivate a friendship with them (the first time she went up there, she apparently walked right into their house -- needless to say we had to have a little talk) and will go up and help them with their gardening, chattering away the whole time. They are a retired preacher and his wife and wonderful people. Millie and Abby showed them their Easter dresses and then they talked about going to church. Our neighbors mentioned that they have drums at their church -- a detail which quite intrigued Millie -- and as I sat in our sacrament meeting singing "Christ the Lord is Risen Today", I realized that nothing can replace the fullness and feeling of the Spirit in sacrament meeting. I'm so grateful for the gospel of Jesus Christ and the knowledge that we have.


The Easter bunny was apparently a little too generous this year (perhaps the poor bunny was a little hungry when she did her shopping?) as the girls couldn't fit all of their Easter eggs in their pails, but they had fun combing the lawn and woods for their treats. Then, as we were getting dinner ready, we made the mistake of giving Jane a few jelly beans to keep her quiet. After that, she refused to eat anything but candy for the rest of the evening (which we of course could not allow, although she did manage to get her grubby little hands some of Abby's malted milk eggs before we noticed) so we put her to bed with a full cup of milk and are hoping that it will tide her over until morning.



Earlier this week we had a wonderful time at the Darden Easter party visiting the Easter bunny (Jane would have nothing to do with him) and having an egg hunt.