Easter is not quite yet; but I know I will have other things I will want to post about by the time it has actually come. 😉

Anyway, we have been enjoying lots of Easter festivities this past week! One thing that the kids and I have had lots of fun doing is looking at the messages we get from the Church each day of Holy Week. It has been a huge blessing to be able to remember Christ more specifically each day leading up to our celebration of His Resurrection.

Our kids love crafts (I can’t imagine where they get that from…), so we have done some fun Easter crafts. One was paper bunnies, the other was paper carrots with hand-print bunnies popping out. The kids had fun making both of them, and we are enjoying displaying them!

We also did egg coloring. But since real eggs are reaching luxury status, we decided this would be a good year to try out an alternative.

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Another fun thing we’ve done is the traditional Monson-family Easter hunt. Josh found loads of fun things for the kids and hid them around the back yard. They all loved gathering all the goodies they could get their hands on, and have been snacking basically constantly for 3 days!

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Also in honor of Easter, Fay made us some Easter/springtime cupcakes! She decided she really wanted to do these ones all on her own; so all I did to help was get out some ingredients that were up high, preheat the oven, and put the cupcakes in. Josh helped with sugar and food coloring amounts on the frosting, and took the cupcakes out of the oven. Other than that, it was all Fay. We’re so proud of how she’s working on her goal!

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And, of course, there’s decorating! I realized that I didn’t have much in the way of Christ-centered Easter decor–mostly what I had was a LOT of plastic eggs and paper bunnies–so Josh and I made a sign to make a foundation for the mantel. The inspiration came from a sign I saw at Hobby Lobby back before the world closed. Since I couldn’t go get it (plus it was smaller than I wanted it to be for the mantel), we recreated it!

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I also made both the pillow covers on the chairs (the green one is old), as well as the tassel banner. Projects like these are good stress relief for me. It’s just so exciting and energizing to create something beautiful!

Speaking of which, Josh knew this past week was going to be rough for me, so on his weekly grocery trip he went and found a bunch of craft supplies for me to make a wreath with. It was a challenge for me, because I had never used some of the supplies he chose, and didn’t have any prior vision. But after a bunch of pinterest and youtube research, I decided to just go for it! It was a TON of fun to put together, and I feel like it even turned out at least half-decent!

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Here is documentation of some other fun goings on.

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The last thing I wanted to mention is how Josh has twice magically turned ordinary dinner into a party! A week or two ago we ordered dinner from a Hawaiian grill, and Josh decided we should get out all our island themed decorations (of which he have a fairly impressive amount) and turn it into a Hawaiian party! He even got out his giant new speaker so we could have hula music!

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Then there was April Fool’s dinner.

Also, the kids and I played a fun April Fools prank on Josh. We all came down to his “office” where he was working and told him we had made him a pan of “brown-Es”. He was excited to have dessert at 10 AM; but he was disappointed. Don’t worry, though. He got his real brownies later that week.

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