Happy Easter!

Each year at Easter we focus less and less on the Easter Bunny and TRY to focus more and more on the Atonement of Jesus Christ and what that means for each of us.

We informed the kids a few weeks ago that this year the Easter Bunny was going to fill a family basket instead of baskets for each individual person. Both Nicole and Matthew were fine with that, but my fourth child...aka Kenneth Gerald Cheney or my Husband...didn't like the idea and thought it was lame. So at the last minute (Saturday night at 10:45 when I was at Walmart being the procrastinating Easter Bunny that I am, I folded and got a few extra things to fill small baskets for all three of the big babies.

Nicole and Matthew were surprised and really happy when they found the surprise on Sunday morning. Ken was glad he didn't have to share his resses peanut butter bunnies.

The baskets didn't have anything special in them (look closely and you can see they each got a lint roller and erasers that they need for school) and the treats were eaten very quickly. The fun part came later on Sunday afternoon when we colored our eggs and then hid them over and over in the front room for the kids to find. We did it inside because we were being blessed with rain all day Sunday. I loved that too!

Since Nicole was not feeling well yet, we decided to have eggs and hashbrowns for dinner last night and we have a more traditional Easter Dinner tonight before FHE.

Although yesterday was really nice, TODAY was amazing. We had a nice dinner that the kids helped me prepare and then for FHE we started the article, 'He is Risen' out of the April Ensign. We looked at the first 3 pictures, read the captions and looked up the references in our scriptures. As we were explaining what was going on the kids had so many questions about the Atonement that we were reading other passages in the scriptures to answer their questions and we showed them extra pictures from the new Gospel Art Book the church has put out (which is AWESOME). The spirit that was present at our FHE tonight was so sweet and I could tell that my kids were really getting it. It seems like we go through the motions of FHE so often that when I can see a light I get so excited.

When we tucked the kids in tonight for bed, the questions were still coming and we decided that we would continue with the article for our scripture study for the rest of the week.

What a great day.