Easter

This year for Easter, we just did one basket for Clara with a chocolate bunny for Paul and a See's Rocky Road egg for me.  Clara got goldfish crackers, animal crackers, a bunny sippy cup, a lamb, bubbles, a flashing light egg-wand thing, and Crayola washable markers that are supposedly appropriate for kids who are 12+ months old.  Clara's Easter dress, cardigan, and sandals are from Gymboree.  I was hoping to take a family picture after church but Clara fell asleep in the 45 seconds it takes to get from our house to the church building and by the time she woke up Paul and I had already changed clothes, so it didn't happen.  The only photo we got was on my iPhone as we were walking out the door for our meetings.

We did our own little easter egg hunt for Clara in the backyard on Saturday.  She can't eat candy yet anyway and is more interested in sticking leaves and grass in her mouth than finding colorful plastic orbs, so we didn't bother finding a local egg hunt.  Next year.  Instead, I just put some puffs in a few eggs and scattered them in a small radius in the backyard so she would know what she was going for.
 

We often get comments about how grown-up she looks, but to me, she is still just such a tiny little thing.  I think there are three reasons why she looks bigger than she is - first is that her hair is so thick and long whereas lots of baby still have pretty much no hair at 10 1/2 months, second is that she is a lithe little gal so she doesn't exhibit the same chunkiness that other babies her age seem to have, and third is that I usually get down on her level to photograph her and I fill the frame, which makes her seem bigger than she is.  A friend who was visiting us from Oregon recently confirmed this when she saw Clara in person and exclaimed that she expected someone bigger based on the blog pictures but instead she found our dainty girl.  I tried to give a better sense of scale in some of the egg-hunt pics by taking the photos looking down at Clara rather than getting all the way down in the grass like I normally do.

Paul spoke in church on Easter Sunday and he had stressed about it all week long, but in the end he needn't have worried too much because between the other speakers, multiple musical numbers, two confirmations, and a letter from the First Presidency, he ended up with about 5 minutes to talk.  He did a great job and I loved listening to him talk about his testimony of the Savior, even though by that point in the meeting I was standing at the back of the gym with Clara who was starting to melt-down from need of a nap.

After church we drove to Dublin to have dinner with Paul's cousins, who are our only family in the area.  It has actually been a while since we have gone up there to hang out with them so it was fun catching up with them and playing with their kids.  There was a new trampoline at their house and I simply cannot resist jumping on those things, so I slipped off my shows and climbed up with Clara to see how she likes to bounce.  She loved it and in the video I made, you can hear her shrill squeals of delight.