And THEN...

Here are lots of pictures to catch you up on our house lately. I think I have them in chronolgical order mostly. First, Annie has been helping Pappa make lots of chai these days.
And THEN there's the... ...cutting, cutting, cutting. One night I had accidentally left out the SAFE scissors (the plastic ones that can't cut anything but paper and are not sharp- n.b. grandparents!) and some scrap paper we had been cutting and I woke up at about 2 am to strange sounds from the living room. Sure enough, it was Annie, trimming away little tiny pieces of paper! Somehow I managed to convince her it was still bedtime and she should go back to sleep.
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And THEN: We've had a good week of celebrating Palm Sunday.

Will working on our story board - adding palm branches and t-shirts for Jesus and the donkey to walk on.

And THEN there was Good Friday:

I made hot-crossed-buns that we had warm for breakfast on Friday. I figured it was a good day to do it as we were going to talk about the cross and we could eat leftovers for the next two Easter mornings as well and keep talking about the meaning of the cross.

And THEN it was shorts weather and my Will has outgrown some of his old shorts, so I sewed this alligator pair for him and he was thrilled. Not your typical "new Easter pants" I guess, but perhaps more generally useful.

And THEN we decorated Easter Eggs:

And THEN it was Saturday:

Saturday we spent the day hiking to Flag Hill. Will tried climbing all the trees (there are LOTS) and Nate kept him from getting too hurt in the process.

(also, check out his cool shorts!)

Annie collected pinecones and had a blast watching Will and running around the open space.

The rhododendrons are still blooming, but many are now dressing the ground with their faded pink petals.
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And THEN today, Easter Sunday, we got up while it was still dark and walked for about 45 minutes to an Easter Son-Rise service at a Church in the center of town. 10 Churches held the combined service outside on a lawn. It was really neat to walk and meet other Christians from all the different Churches all heading to the same service before dawn. Some were singing, some talking, and always the greeting of "Happy Easter!" and "He Is Risen!"

When we returned home, we ate the last of our hot-crossed-buns and Nate hid Easter eggs for the kids to find. They LOVED this 'game' and once they had found all 26 eggs, they ate the trail mix that was inside a few of them and begged to do it again. I think that in total we have hidden and found Easter Eggs about 20 times today! They don't mind that the eggs are always empty - they just loved finding them. Thankfully at the end of the day we managed to get Will to hide them for Annie so that we could just sit and sip chai and watch!

Happy Easter! JESUS IS RISEN!!!