The Ducote Family: Easter

Thursday, April 9, 2015

Easter

We had a great Easter and weeks leading up to Easter getting ready for the holiday. At school, Joseph talked a lot about Jesus dying and then rising on Easter so we took advantage of conversations about the real reason for the holiday. But, still had our share of commercialized fun :)

We colored eggs on Saturday so the Easter bunny would hide them and then wrote a note to the bunny that evening to make sure he knew that we were ready for him! Thankfully he found our house and wrote a note back to us, although Joseph was concerned that he forgot to take his note with him.

One of our sweet little bunnies!

Joseph woke up in the middle of the night with a wet bed so he came down to our room around midnight and noticed that the Easter bunny had been here! He was pretty excited but thankfully fell back to sleep quickly. He was up by 7:00 on Sunday morning and patiently (although he did find everyone's baskets!) waited for the girls to get up (Julia slept until 7:30 and Ella slept until almost 8:00!) After finding the baskets again (since Joseph hid them in new spots after finding them the first time), looking for the eggs and eating a quick breakfast we rushed out to church for 9:00 a.m. mass. We arrived only 10 minutes early which doesn't cut it on Easter morning so we were forced to the gym where they had an overflow mass which actually worked out really well-it was a little less formal than the one in the sanctuary and it was finished by 10:00 a.m. which with 3 young kids is definitely an Easter blessing!

Easter morning! (The bunny hid the baskets. Thanks to Nani and Poppa and Aunt Cindy for the fun Easter gifts!)

After mass, we bribed the kids with chocolate bunnies that Nani and Poppa sent for them to get the following pictures! (The chocolate only worked for so long but had to include all of the pictures just for the memories!)

Ella yelling "chocolate!!!!"

And, here they are posing with the chocolate bunnies that they smiled so nicely for :)

After burning some of the chocolate bunny energy off outside, Joseph helped me bake the Easter bunny cake, as well as a carrot cake from scratch while the girls napped, and then we headed to Sawmill Park for our annual Easter potluck with friends.

This is the third year that we have gotten together on Easter for a potluck and egg hunt and it is so much fun!! We had 9 families and 20 kids and everyone had a blast! After the church egg hunt last weekend, and then an egg hunt at the library on Tuesday, Joseph had an egg hunt at school on Wednesday, and a boot camp egg hunt on Friday we were pretty much "egg'd" out (at least I was) but we managed to rally for one more egg hunt with our friends. It was a chilly afternoon (in the low 60s) but felt colder after the 80 degree weather we have been having but everyone had a great time playing and just celebrating together!

Over the years, Rich has earned the privilege/responsibility/title of getting the kids corralled and smiling for a picture. He has a very high success rate (see above picture!) but here are some of the outtakes!