Easter 2015

Easter weekend dawned bright and beautiful so we took the girls out for a hike in the east hills of Dublin.  The hike was lovely - all climbing rolling hills through meadow grasses and wildflowers.  We know those hills will brown up before too long and it will get too hot to enjoy this type of hiking so it was nice to take advantage while we could.  Rose continued to show how much she enjoys hiking by pointing her little self straight uphill and trudging happily upward, holding our hands when things got a little steep for her.  Even Clara's attitude toward hiking improved on this one.

 

When we got home we watched General Conference and dyed Easter eggs.

Paul strung purple yarn throughout the house after we put the girls to bed at night and I put together their Easter baskets.  Clara' basket had new flip-flops, a loofah, gardening gloves, an Easter sticker book, a kaleidoscope, a mermaid beach towel (with brown hair so it looks like her), a magnet set for the four seasons (basically like paper dolls but with magnets - they are awesome and the girls love them), and some candy.  And she got a little watering can that didn't fit in the basket.

Rose also got new flip-flops and a magnet set (a sweet shop to make cupcakes, pies, cakes, etc.), sidewalk chalk, bubbles and blowers (that didn't fit in the basket either), new toothbrushes, finger puppets, and some candy and goldfish crackers.  Oh, and each girl got a hula-hoop that Paul picked up last minute that day - they have had a lot of fun with those.

Rose wasted no time getting into the candy.  She went straight for anything wrapped in colorful foil and even managed to sneak one of the milk chocolate See's eggs into her mouth before I could round them all up.  I didn't even know she had it until I saw chocolate drool dribbling down her chin and she opened her mouth in a chocolately smile and let me fish out the foil wrapper that she had sucked the candy out of.

After breakfast (cinnamon rolls, scrambled eggs, and bacon with fruit), we did an easter egg hunt in the backyard for the girls.  Rose immediately took a liking to the handful of glittery eggs that were spread around and would ignore the plain old plastic eggs.  And Clara seemed to enjoy helping Rose find eggs as much as searching for her own. 

We had the Hamby's over for Easter dinner that night (ham, potatoes, peas, a pie - normal stuff) and did a family home evening about the meaning of Easter and Christ's resurrection.  It was a lovely holiday.  And a few days in advance I took the girls back to Sunol to get a picture of them in their Easter dresses.  Rose kind of went berserk about the idea of posing on a slope for me (she either wants to go up or down but how dare I try to get her to stay put for a second) so I pulled out the small rocking chair that has turned out to be a valuable prop for me when it comes to taking pictures of kids but even that was making her angry.  The picture I got below was pretty much the only good one of the two girls together, but it has the redeeming feature of Clara looking lovingly at her sister. 

But this is how Rose really felt about most of the photo shoot.  (face palm)

Anyway, after I gave up trying to get a more traditional picture of Rose and just let her wander while I hopped through the weeds and wildflowers as best I could I was able to get a couple of cute profile and semi-profile shots of her, paparazzi-style.  Oh, and I changed her dress for a different look to go with the individual shot I got of Clara the week before that turned out so well.

 

 

And that was our Easter!