Easter happenings and the END of Lent!!!

We hope everyone had a great Easter! Ours was rainy but wonderful. I haven't been a big celebrator of the secular part of Easter in recent years, but I feel like it, and every holiday, is SO much fun with a toddler. 

Jaden's Easter egg from nursery the week before

Jaden got a special Easter package in the mail from Nana and Grandpa Howell! He LOVED his Cars jammies (of course :)), but was mostly interested in the pinwheel. He's worked really hard figuring out how to blow on it to make it go fast. 

Daddy made it home in time for Easter (he actually got home a few days before) so after church and before dinner with friends we had another egg hunt that he could be a part of. After doing one egg hunt already with Grandma, Jaden was a pro and knew right away where the best hiding spots would be. He was going NUTS over the eggs, shouting "MO! (More) MO ETT! (More eggs)" over and over whenever he saw one. 

Our little hoarder :)

Poll: What do you think of Jaden's sweater vest? It was given to me by a ward member who had it given to her by another ward member. I thought it was darling but when Steve put it on Jaden before church he said he thought it was hideous and he would never wear something like that. My first defense was "But it's from Baby Gap..." haha like that automatically qualifies something to be cute. And of course I know grown men aren't going to wear most of what little boys wear! I'd be worried if Steve wanted to wear that vest, haha... Anyway, now I'm self conscious about it and I don't want to put Jaden in it again if it's ugly. So I need your honest opinions. Yay or nay? I'm not financially invested in it so I won't feel bad if you don't like it... :) Thanks!

This is him FREAKING out over the all the eggs he could see at once.  We ended up putting away the camera and getting out the flip cam because he was so hilarious.

Jaden's Easter basket. I probably should have put something spiritual in there? I was too busy thinking, "YES. Now we have more than two sippy cups and I won't have to hand wash them anymore because we have enough to wait for the dishwasher..." haha I think sippy cups were more of a present for me than for Jaden. Huge thanks to my madre who helped play Easter bunny.  

Popping all the eggs!

Steve and I didn't do baskets for each other. My mom started a tradition (when we got old enough to know the truth about the Easter bunny) where instead of buying too much candy and dealing with baskets that sat out for weeks on our dressers and got grass everywhere, she took us shopping for summer shoes. We usually needed new shoes by the end of winter so we'd go up to Park City and make a trip out of it. Then she'd hide our shoes on Easter and we'd have to go find them. Anyway, I've been in need of some new slip-on type shoes (I've been wearing nasty moccasins for years), so for our date night we went to the outlets and got me some fake Toms and some nice new work shirts for Steve. It might seem kind of boring, but it was actually really exciting because we don't often spend money on things like that for ourselves. And we felt better about not buying so much candy. Except somehow we still accumulated SO MUCH candy?? I don't know how, but it has GOT to go. Why do all holidays revolve around junk food? I don't get it.

Anyway, we had a great Easter Sunday and ended the day with an invitation to dinner at our friends Sam and Kimberly's house. They are away from family and have a son, Isaac, who is six months younger than Jaden. It was relaxing and fun, and if you can't have family around, it's so nice to have good friends. 

We loved the day, the spirit, the time together, and overall we feel very blessed and grateful for our Savior's sacrifice and victory over the grave. Happy Easter!

PS--Lent is OVER!!!! It was hard. They say it's 40 days--yeah, it's really more like 46. They don't count the Sundays. Anyway, I tried to give up Facebook and overall I feel like I did a semi-decent job. I admit that I used it to 1-stalk my brothers when they got engaged, and 2-I would get on once a day every once in a while to check for messages (FB is the only way I communicate with my counselor in Primary). So all in all I'd say I sacrificed maybe 25-30 days out of 46. That's about  54-65%. Yeah, so it's a D to F range if you're going by school grading standards. But I see it as a victory. I changed a habit and a mindset and I'm proud of myself. I only scrolled through my minifeed (the true time-waster) maybe three or four times on weak days, so I'd say really I got an A. Whatever, it's my grading scale anyway :). But I'm glad I did it and I'm even more glad that Lent is over!!!!! I don't know if I'll do it again...? I guess we'll see what bad habits I have next year that I need to break!