Eastah!

Yesterday was our 4th Annual Easter: Dinner and Tournament. Always a good time, and always tons of good food. This year was no exception. The Chaplin's graciously opened their home for us, which I know from experience is hard on a preparation and clean up standpoint, so thank you so much! The table was gorgeous and everything was very festive. I may be passing the torch for good after seeing how nice it was yesterday! Remind me to never work the night before Easter. I thought at any moment I would fall face down asleep into my funeral potatoes. If you're eating them for Easter, shouldn't they technically be called resurrected potatoes?

After dinner we dyed eggs in preparation for the egg toss. A quick peek out the window to see how much light we had left and what do we find? SNOW! Are you kidding me? However, tradition must continue, and we all bundled up and headed out into the street. In what is arguably the quickest egg toss ever, I drop early, shattering our egg. I blame it on sheer exhaustion and wearing glasses which threw off my perception. The snow wasn't helping, either. So, for the second year running, Mike and Jessica emerged the champions.

Post-celebratory egg kiss.

The rare emergence of a bespectacled me, eyes too tuckered out to keep contacts in any longer.

Linda and a happy Carter, who was throughly enjoying coloring eggs.

We did too. If you ever wonder why Derrick always looks so bug-eyed in all his pictures, it's because if I don't remind him to open his eyes he always looks drunk. So he overcompensates.

The Anthony's, braving the snow with cute little Elizabeth all bundled up.

Adorable Jessica and her delicious strawberry shortcake. I didn't catch a pic of the eclairs, but they were amazing as well!

Church was good, from what I remember. I don't know if I can keep going straight from work. I totally dozed during one of the speakers, and that's so embarassing! And rude! Our Laurels Advisor is the best ever. Her lessons are amazing and the girls just adore her. It's probably b/c she's so darn adorable and just like a loveable grandma. Which she is. Anyway, her lesson was so great, and the girls are just amazing, and so smart, with such strong testimonies. I was sooo tired and contemplated leaving halfway through, but I couldn't bring myself to leave. And after the lesson when the Advisor bore her testimony of the resurrection and Easter and asked if I had anything to add, I couldn't even bring myself to stop crying to say anything. I just knew it was all true and hoped the girls knew I did as well. It was a great ending to the meeting block, and I'm so glad I decided to stay.

Easter really is a wonderful time of year, and if there's one good thing about living in the Midwest is that everyone is really religious, and there are a lot of opportunities to talk about Christ, even if it's not in an LDS context. For example, Sunday morning at the end of my shift, we were all in the nursery talking about Good Friday and the events that transpired and just different aspects of the crucifixion and it was really cool/weird/interesting to be sitting in a hospital nursery talking to such a wide variety of women about Christ and Easter.

We looked at this picture yesterday in our class, and I love it. It's just beautiful and flowy and evokes a feeling of peace and joy. And I especially love the one angel on the left, the only one not playing a trumpet, but instead is praying. I can just imagine the feelings of gratitude and happiness she's expressing. Just love it.

Hope everyone had a great Easter!