ALLELUIA!

HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE!

Despite being a few days late for the actual day, it is still Easter season, so I'm going to wish away. Aren't we lucky to have a Savior who willingly gave his LIFE for us and our forgiveness?

We tried talking to Eli a bit more this year about why we celebrate Easter. He seemed to remember that Jesus died and rose from the dead. We drew some pictures of hands and feet being pierced by nails. Eli was very concerned that Jesus had "boo-boo's" and needed band-aids. He actually put stickers on the drawings to act as band-aids. "Ouch! Jesus has boo-boo's. The nails hurt his hand. He is bleeding," Eli said. He also seemed to focus in on that we say ALLELUIA to celebrate Jesus rising from the dead. I wish I would have captured his little "Alleluia!" on video so you could hear his cute pronunciation of the word. I am happy that we have laid groundwork to maybe go a little deeper into the meaning of Easter next year. Now, where the Easter Bunny fits into all of it, who knows? I'm not sure I'm ready to explain why we have an Easter Bunny just yet....or maybe Easter baskets and goodies will be from Mommy and Daddy. Things to think about....

As usual, we captured moments from Easter and the days leading up to it on camera to share.

Earlier during Holy Week, Eli got a box of Easter goodies from Grandma and Grandpap Carson complete with a new (better fitting!) Blue Jays hat, sunglasses, stickers, and other fun stuff.

On Holy Saturday, Eli got to die eggs (at the beach....we went for the weekend!)

We tried to let him do it as much on his own as we could. We only had the high counter, so we stripped him down, had him stand on his high chair, and go at it.

The waiting was the hardest part!

Hands got messy....

...and several eggs got dropped. Slippery little suckers! :) Eli loved putting names on different eggs. Grandma, Grandpa, Eli, Mommy, and Daddy all got eggs...and Eli wanted to make Jesus an egg too. (The pink one on the end was Jesus's.)

Easter morning, there were a couple of eggs hidden around the house along with Eli's Easter basket. Eli actually cried when we told him the Easter Bunny hid his basket. "The Easter Bunny take away!!!" He was very upset to think that the Easter Bunny had taken his basket for good.

He was much happier after finding it and all of the goodies!

There were more eggs downstairs! Too bad it was so darn windy. The plastic eggs blew all over the place!

Counting all of his eggs and making sure we can see how many he has.

And finally, we made it back to town in time to get gussied up for Easter Mass.

We went to the extremely UNCROWDED Easter evening service. It was a wonderfully blessed Easter weekend.

Hope yours was BLESSED too!