Easter 2010

We had a really nice, relaxing Easter weekend. It was General Conference for church, which made the weekend that much better. I always say how much I enjoyed the talks, but there were a few this time that I think were given just for me! It was wonderful and uplifting.

In between sessions on Saturday, we dyed our Easter eggs. Now here's a huge confession: this was our first year dying eggs. That's right, we've never done it before. We usually just buy the plastic eggs and let the kids have a blast hunting them. But we decided we'd been bad parents long enough and should give it a shot. The kids loved it, of course, and we had some fun, too. We also learned that glittery Easter egg dying kits should be banned from the face of the planet. Never. Again. But the tie dye ones turned out neat!


Easter weekend also brought with it a new addition to our family. An upright freezer for our garage! Well, it's actually only temporarily for the garage. Once warm (i.e. scalding!) weather hits, we don't think it'll be cost-efficient to have it out there. We're hoping to get it moved into the pantry within the next few weeks. I've read up, and apparently it'll be easy enough to get an outlet in there. Anyway, I found it on Craigslist for a great deal and was super excited to get it. Now I'm working on getting a list together for meals to prepare to fill that baby up! Any suggestions? On my list so far: spaghetti sauce, chili, lasagna, taco meat, shepherd's pie, tater tot casserole. But after that, I'm drawing a blank!

After the last session on Sunday, we let the kids go out and play for a bit to burn off some energy. They all did EXCELLENT sitting and listening to Conference, especially Kyrie. But man, were they going stir crazy. While they rode bikes, Derk and I just relaxed. And all of a sudden, the house started to shake! And it kept getting stronger and stronger, louder and louder. It took us a second to realize it was an earthquake, and a BIG one at that. We ran out and got the kids inside, and I made them stand in the front doorway. It lasted for nearly a minute and ended up measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale! After that, we felt 6 aftershocks, the largest of which was a 5.0. It was crazy! Derk and I both had some messed up equilibrium after that.

Easter dinner was nothing short of delicious! Before Derk's grandparents left Yuma to head back to Salt Lake, they gave us a bunch of stuff from their freezer, which included t-bone steaks! We decided to use those for our Easter dinner. So we had grilled t-bone steak, mashed potatoes and grilled asparagus. Kyrie set the table and made menus for everyone. :)

We ended the day by reading about the crucifixion and resurrection. I got so choked up reading it and could barely make it through. I knew the story already, of course, but to read it again just made me have such a deeper appreciation for what He did for us. What they put him through was unspeakable, and my testimony of the Atonement and my love for my Heavenly Father grew exponentially.

We hope you all had a wonderful Easter, full of the love of the Savior!