Easter!

Ok, well I made no effort to order or organize any of these pictures, so I'll just start writing and hope you make sense of it all.

Easter was pretty fun this year, overall.  On Saturday, we went shopping, having not yet obtained any Easter supplies, and then headed over to Tim and Amanda's for egg-dying.  Keilana was a bit skittish about it at first, but once she got the hang of it she thought it was pretty neat and she wanted to make all the eggs pink (her most favorite color).  Dylan initially tried to drink the orange dye, but upon discovering that it was composed largely of vinegar, he thought better of it and put an egg in instead.  He was quite a big fan of the egg dying, and enjoyed the experimentation of mixing dyes.

After the eggs were all good and colored (with a few beautiful, hippie-esque creatures from Doug), the kids did a couple of crafts.  They decorated some door knob hangers with foamies and painted some little ceramic figurines.  Dylan quickly lost interest in that activity when he discovered that it wasn't nearly as messy as the egg dying.

Sunday was quite a nice Easter.  The kids woke up and were excited about their baskets.  Dylan was particularly jazzed about the Cadbury cream egg he had all to himself (and quite proud of himself for unwrapping it all on his own).  Keilana loved her bunny and has been carrying it everywhere for the last two days.  She was also excited to get all dressed up in her Easter dress (a hand-me-down from Elyse).  Sacrament meeting was wonderful.  The Bishopric were the speakers and the primary sang.  It was full--the Lindsay Ward building is pretty small, but it was full up clear to the back of the Cultural hall.  There were a lot of people there visiting family for the holiday, and a lot of faces I hadn't seen in a while--I'm glad they were there:)

Young Women's was great.  Our Bishop is so wonderful that he comes in and teaches the lesson for my girls every fourth Sunday, and this was no exception.  He talked about the First Presidency, Quorum of the Twelve, and the Quorums of the Seventy--what they do, how those callings happen, etc.  It was a wonderful preparation for General Conference in two weeks, where we will have a solemn assembly and sustain a new prophet.  It was moving and powerful to listen to Bishop Meik talk about the setting apart of a new prophet--about that process and all those involved.  And I saw a moment during that lesson where the girls face lit up and I knew that they got it.

It flashed me back to earlier in the week during our Wednesday night activity.  I had set up a table and the girls were all sitting around, each of them with a bit of unleavened bread (tortilla) and grape juice (purple Gatorade) in front of them.  I played the Kenneth Cope song (Gesthemane) and then took them day by day through the major events of the last week of the Savior's life, until we came to Thursday night.  We talked about the Feast of the Passover, and the Lord's Last Supper and institution of the Sacrament.  We read several scriptures about the Sacrament and the Atonement and then talked about the Lord, after that last meal with his apostles, walking to a Garden where, fatigued from the week's events, his apostles fell asleep.  But he didn't.  He wept and prayed and bled.  He atoned for all sins.  He felt all pains.  We talked a little bit about what it means when we say "an infinite Atonement".  Then I asked the girls how all this (the precious act in Gesthamane, the scriptures about mercy and love and forgiveness and that One Great Sacrifice) connected to the Sacrament.  And then I saw it--all of a sudden, it just clicked for two of the girls--I saw the light come one, I saw the thoughts turning, "That's it.  He's met the debt for everything I've ever done wrong.  He's already met the debt for everything I may ever do wrong.  That's why the Sacrament is so important, that's why do it every week.  Because of what he did, all I ever have to do is feel truly sorry for the wrongs I have done and take that bread and water and I'm made entirely clean again, just like at baptism."   We talked about that for a while, and it touched my heart so much to watch that start to sink in for these 12-year-olds.  To start to really understand what it is we've been given.

To finish out the night, we talked about the long trudge up Golgotha, about the love and mercy that the Savior showed even to those who were the most cruel to him.  And, to cap it all off, the glorious reality of his Resurrection and exaltation.  Most 12 year olds can't grasp the idea of their own mortality, let alone immortality (to be fair, I'm not sure I understand a whole lot about it myself), but I could see that they were at least beginning to realize what this is all about, and that was a beautiful thing to see.

Anyway, I really enjoyed Kindon's lesson, and was grateful for it, since the rest of our Easter holiday was rather unspiritual.  We had a great time--we went over to Amanda and Tim's again  We took Brad with us, and Katy, Chuck and Rachel were there, too. We had some yummy dinner and the kids hunted eggs.  Well, most of the kids.  Dylan fell asleep on the way there and slept through the egg hunts, but he kept picking up other people's eggs later in the day and seemed pretty pleased just with that.  Keilana was so stinking fast that I mostly only got pictures of the back of her head or pieces of her arm.  She loved hunting eggs and was actually getting quite good at it near the end of the hunt.  She was getting more observant (not generally one of her strong characteristics) and thought the whole thing was pretty funny.  It was beautiful outside--clear and sunny and hanging around 78*--so the kids were out in the yard pretty much the whole time.  Keilana and Clayton were driving each other nuts by early evening, so we loaded up our kids and took them home around fivish to save everyone's sanity.