Happy Easter

Happy Easter! What a wonderful time of year. The perfect opportunity to remember the Savior's sacrifice for all of us and the wonderful gift of the resurrection. I was given the opportunity to speak in church today, so I have spent the last week studying this topic and it has made me very grateful for the hope found through that resurrection. Here's something I found for my talk that I really liked:

Samuel Smiles wrote: "Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey towards it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us... Hope sweetens the memory of experiences well loved. It tempers our troubles to our growth and our strength. It befriends us in dark hours, excites us in bright ones. It lends promise to the future and purpose to the past. It turns discouragement to determination."

Isn't that great? Everyone has their own discouraging times. This deployment happens to be one for me. But at the same time I have faith and hope that Heavenly Father is watching over this little family of ours and blessing us in so many different ways.

Stepping aside from the spiritual side of Easter, let's talk about the Easter bunny :) We had a lot of fun with that today. Ellie was incredibly anxious to search for those eggs she had colored last night. We also hid a couple dozen plastic eggs to keep it more exciting and have it last longer. Both girls thought it was great. Ellie was running all over the place and Katie was doing her fair share as well. The Easter baskets were also a hit. I don't even want to know how much sugar went into those two little bodies this morning. Katie got a few M&Ms and she was pretty giddy over those. Ellie ate quite a bit more. Hey- it's Easter, you have to let them live it up, right? They girls also got a few movies from the Easter bunny- ones that we were supposed to get in time for Christmas but because of complications on the Internet they never came in. We got "Curious George," "Cinderella," and "Happy Feet." Very thrilling :)

Since we have afternoon church (ick) we had most of Easter dinner prepared yesterday. We invited Dick and Sybil Smith (our adopted family) over to enjoy supper with us and Ellie staged another Easter egg hunt for them. The cutest part of it all was that she dragged them around showing them where she had hid everything. It was hilarious! It's fun to see her so excited about it all.I took a picture with the girls in their Easter dresses right after church. Katie was exhausted and Ellie not too interested, but I think they turned out nice. Steve has been begging me for a picture of his girls and I thought today would be a great opportunity. The girls did look adorable in their dresses.

I posted pictures from the last couple of days if you're interested.

Just as a side note, Katie started walking on her own three days ago and now she's a pro. She's all over the place. She still likes to hold your hand when she wants to go fast, but she is plenty capable of getting around on her own, which is nice. It's just one more way that she's growing up and that makes me a little sad at the same time. Although, she still loves to be swaddled for bed. The only 1-year old I know of that still enjoys being swaddled. I like it- it's special snuggle time for the two of us.