"and then he came back!"

the fabulous easter message, as explained by a three year old.
we worked on it, and i think he finally got it.
you know, that easter is really about jesus vs the easter bunny thing.
kinda like christmas.
he had no problem catching on that jesus died on a cross because there were lots of people who did not like him.
but it was a little harder to explain that the great celebration of easter is the empty tomb - that jesus might have died but then he "came back" as bennett put it.
and just as it appears our yearly "first swimming experience" will unfold, i believe we will start right back over next year with the explaining/learning all over again.

we were a little scandalous and skipped town this past weekend, despite the fact that stephen was on call.  before you call his bosses, we actually just ran down to the beach, which is closer to the hosiptals over the bay anyway.  i dont know why we havent ever thought of this before...
but it was fabulous and i felt very spoiled to be at the beach TWO weekends in a row.

even though the sun and i got in a fight on saturday and the sun won.
sunscreen smunscreen - it was applied but i still seemed to forget that my parched white skin hadnt seen the likes of beach sun in quite awhile - since last summer i was under an umbrella {if i even ventured outside} cursing my pregnancy-induced tankini.  enter big bright beach sun kicking my tail.  ouch.

but we had easter egg hunts

 

and easter egg dying {we had to explain that to bennett - you can imagine what he thought we were going to do to those eggs...}







i got to play dress up with my youngest and the thrill of it did outweigh, or at least camouflage, the burning sensation on my shoulders and upper back.

 

and now with a flower in her "hair" :

 

this picture may or may not have brought me to tears:

as did this one:

we woke up bright and early easter morning and were pleasantly surprised the easter bunny found us way down there.  bennett was most excited about his "turn on train" {even though it wasnt the exact type of turn on train he thought he was getting...since the easter bunny didnt exactly know until a couple days before easter than bennett did indeed WANT a turn on train...the easter bunny just got lucky that there was a train in his basket that happened to turn on, and therefore was saved from disappointed three year old} and "my very own watering can!!!".  he has watered my plants for me every day since.

we drove home sunday for a moving easter service and then fabulous lunch with stephens family.

and then i found another picture of a green velvet sofa:

FAB

He is risen! :)