Easter blowout

Though Easter is a day to celebrate in itself, this year we had extra to be thankful for. We spent the weekend with Jakes parents and all five and his brothers and their wives and kids. The whole family doesn't get a chance to be together often. We had so much we were wanting to do and I'd say we got to most of it, at least.

On Friday we kicked off the weekend by taking the kids to the park while the dad and kidless wives went shooting. The weather was beautiful and we really wanted to take advantage of it as much as we could. Next up was Arbys for lunch and naps for the kids while the dads went golfing. After nap the moms got to go to the Legends and shop for a bit while the dads colored Easter eggs with the kids. 

Saturday we took a trip to Independence to get family portraits done. We went all the way to Independence because they claimed to have a "special room" for large groups. When we arrived at the room it was about the size of a walk in closet. I thought there was no way they would get us all behind the backdrop but sure enough we squeezed in tight enough to fit. After that we hit up an incredibly busy Golden Coral for some cotton candy lunch and we even managed to squeeze in some time at Science City before the kids crashed.

Check out this picture Deacon took. Pretty good for a four year old.

Naomi got some face time with cousin Sarah. These pictures crack me up. It looks like they are going in for a big hug but then awkwardly switched to the side hug at the last second.

On Friday, after the kids were asleep, the guys went up to the attic to get the boxes of stuff they saved from high school. We all had a good laugh about the things they deemed treasures. Jeff (pictured here in his graduation gown) is holding a pringles can with a hole in the end that he used as a "constellation viewer." Priceless. While they did that, the girls filled a tub full of plastic eggs and 9 easter baskets.

Easter morning the weather was beautiful as was the church service. Here are the girls after church.

After lunch and nap the kids got to hunt eggs.

After they got all the eggs everyone spread out on the deck to open their eggs.

I think these three had almost as much fun with these discarded eggs as they did during the hunt. Somehow they kept digging more and more candy out to the bottom of this pool. Then when all the candy was gone they spent a lot of time transferring eggs from the tub to the pool and back.

It was great to have all the sister-in-laws around to hold cranky Leah for the weekend. I don't know what I would do without them. The good news is after being a crank for most of the weekend she woke up Tuesday morning with a little tooth!

That about wraps it up. I feel like my summary of the weekend was a little lazy. If you want more details you can visit Michelle or Val's blog. I love it when we blog about the same events. Next time I might skip my own post all together and just link to their's. Ok, my brain is shutting off and I'm not sure if I used the right form of "their's." I hate that. Must be time for bed.

P.S. Whenever we are at Nana's, Naomi loves to play with this doll house. She will, seriously, go in there and play by herself for 30 minutes or more. Naomi has a doll house too that she loves to play with and she especially loves when Jake plays with her.  One time when we were on our way to Nana's and talking about the doll house she said Nana's dollhouse is "just like Daddy's doll house." Kids do say the darndest things.