Serafin Scene: easter

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Easter week in Texas

Texas was great! Perfect weather, lots of family and cousins, birthdays, a surprise 60th wedding anniversary for my grandparents, Amber's baby shower, meeting Erin's baby girl, meeting "Scruffy," my parent's new child, I mean dog, so ugly it's almost cute, Easter brunch, Easter bunny pinata and egg hunt with flour filled eggs (!), staying at the beach house, visiting Fredericksburg and our old house and park, seeing the gorgeous wild flowers all over the Hill Country, reuniting with old friends, visiting Betty's 800 acre ranch, mini-olympics in the hotel, and too many sleepless nights! I wouldn't say that I came home relaxed or refreshed, quite the opposite actually, but we crammed a lot in 2 weeks and the kids have tons of great memories to carry them through till we gather again. I came home wishing my sister, Erin, and I lived closer to one another!

Our flight to Texas, though dreaded, was just fine. We had as near direct flights as you can get. Evan slept most of the way. The kids all did great. I had lots of snacks leftover from our Easter party so food was pretty much the entertainment. We were greeted at the airport by my parents, brother, darling neice Camilla, and the most adorable pregnant person on the planet, my SIL, Amber! The next evening we attended a baby for Amber at my parent's home which was really fun. We made lots of the food for the shower, and the one new thing we tried was the French Onion dip on 101 Cookbooks. It was sooo good!

Here are some pictures from our visit:

oh yeah!

I had the kids pack their own activities for the plane, but I never checked to see what they brought. Surprise, Rollin's backpack contained a football, a harmonica, and a stick. It's a good thing I brought food to keep him busy.

9 months pregnant and looking amazing!

Erin, Cathy, Amber and I at the shower.

Erin's baby girl, Naomi

Cousins Kate, Camilla, Tabitha, and Nina

Scruffy, with his one functioning ear, is fortunate Mom and Camilla saw his inner beauty and rescued him from the shelter.

Sunshine and roses all day long ;)

We transformed the living room into a romper room...still not enough big balls to go around though.

Serious cousin bonding...Jude, Rollin, Moriah

Nina became a more confident swimmer

Camilla, Nina, Moriah

plenty of silliness

Hours and hours sitting on blankets underneath the huge shade tree watching the kids play.

lots of popsicles

Kate and Tabitha's Birthday

Dad helping out

Erin and Naomi

When in Mexico (almost).....

When the little ones ran out of steam, Tyler and Bryce tried out some of their karate moves. This was one tough bunny!

8 dozen flour and confetti filled eggs and some very competitive family members! We hid lots of plastic eggs with goodies, but the confetti and flour eggs were a huge hit and ignited a big war in the back yard. No one was safe..except me (camera) and Amber (belly).

Camilla cracking a confetti egg on her Dad

Even Jude got in on the action

Cathy was shown no mercy by her family!!!

Jude traumatized when he saw Ryan crack an egg on Erin!

Sela was a target for Tyler, Bryce and Ethan.

More egg painting.

Camilla layed it on thick!

Enough of this egg stuff, time to paint our bodies!

The Easter bunny did find us in South Texas.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Easter Party

I absolutely love Easter. Without question, it is my favorite holiday. The sweetness in the air, all the new little buds and flowers, longer days, more sunshine and mild temperatures. There is so much to love. Everywhere you look there is new life. The asparagus and strawberries popping up in the market, baby chicks at the feed store, gorgeous flowers brilliant and cheerful, birds singing. There are so many wondrous miracles to behold. And all things truly testify to the reason we celebrate Easter, the reality that Christ lives. How blessed we are to be surrounded this time of year by so many precious reminders of our Savior.

This weekend we had our annual Easter Party. It was so much fun to see so many of our good friends and neighbors. The weather couldn't have been better, which is always the most stressful part of planning this party. Once I felt comfortable with the forecast on Wednesday, we started preparing, shopping, and cooking up a storm. The kids were egg stuffing maniacs!

The food was delicious, thanks to lots of kind friends, and the kids ran and played the whole time. The zipline was going all day, although I never made it down there. Better not to know sometimes! :) Zig orchestrated the Easter egg hunt. He and a group of Dads split up and hid the eggs all over the yard while another group of guys distracted the kids with a kickball game.

I had an egg decorating station set up in the green house with traditional cups with dye and also paint. We were going to have the kids decorate their eggs in the style of Jackson Pollock, but most were so busy playing that there was never a lull. I was pretty occupied as well but when I went down to the greenhouse in the evening, I noticed most of the eggs were dyed and a few people did give the string technique a try! The kids and I tried it later in the evening and I really thought the process was fun and the finished product very neat.

Spotty and Phoebe enjoyed all the extra attention. We borrowed the Glover's guinea play pen and put them out on the lawn. They were the "special guests" of the party.

Now we're off to Texas tomorrow to celebrate babies, special anniversaries, and Easter with all the cousins! Air travel alone with four kids aside, I am totally excited and can't wait to be surrounded by all my siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles and grandparents.

Jackson Pollack technique

These little blue dotted eggs were supposed to be baby birds, but I had to bag the beek and eye details when I started running out of time. The sample one we made was cute though!