Tommerdahl Visit + Easter!

Per last post, we wrapped up Colton's birthday on Easter weekend with a visit from Grandma and Grandpa T, Uncle Jordan, and Uncle Javonte (see previous post for pictures).  Besides celebrating Colton on Saturday, we had a great weekend being together and celebrating our Risen Savior.  Here are a few pictures!

The kids LOVE Grandpa's dog Bode!

The weather was GORGEOUS!  Played baseball, bean bags, soccer, did gymnastics, climbed trees, 

went for a family bike ride....

Mr. Ken, our neighbor, had candy Easter baskets for the kids!   I will include that picture here when I receive it!  He is so generous with them and we were so excited when he agreed to spend Easter with our family!

Easter Dinner!  Paul saved the day when we realized our oven wasn't heating up two hours after sticking the ham in...(so weird as it was working fine earlier in the week!) and he quickly put the ham in the smoker!  Our neighbor Ken let us use his oven as our rolls were rising, but we had no oven!

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I took a great picture of all 10 of us sitting down to Easter dinner....including our neighbor Mr. Ken who also joined us for church that morning....but for some reason it didn't take :(.  Oh well!  It was a really great picture so you'll just have to imagine it!
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The boys hid 60 eggs...20 for each kid...all around the yard!  Summer looked for orange and yellow eggs, Colton looked for blue and green, and Larkyn looked for pink and purple.  Each were hidden according to ability and contained a coin or two!

Larkyn immediately asked Javonte to be her finding-eggs buddy and stuck close to him - so sweet!

It was so nice out so we decorated eggs outside!

Grandma and Grandpa T got the kids beach towels!  And Kites!  So we spent the rest of the gorgeous afternoon flying kites at the park near us!

We also celebrated Easter with the Kirkwood side in conjunction with celebrating my mom's birthday!  We enjoyed dinner together and she had Easter baskets for the kids.  The kids have been enjoying listening to the new Jesus Seeds CD and Psalms CDs and also injoyed using the fancy sidewalk chalk markers to decorate both Auntie Kristin's and our driveways!

As much fun as all these things are, we celebrate most the REASON for the holiday - we are so grateful for the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross for us and for rising again so we have the hope of eternal life with him!!!  One of my favorite parts of Easter this year was reading through an Easter Bible reading plan as a family in the weeks leading up to Easter.  I love our family conversations and how much more (especially the older two ) are able to understand and discuss.  We are SO beyond blessed.  Thank you, Jesus!