Belated Easter-

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter! I am slowly catching up on posts here. For Easter, my parents drove up here Sat and stayed until Sun evening. It is so nice to have family close by (well 2 hours is close for us, considering what it took to visit the last few years!) It was very cold out, due to the wind, but the men finished putting together a wooden sing set/fort for the girls complete with a slide. That took most of our down time.

Sunday the girls woke up to the usual egg hunt and baskets- they loved it! It seems to get more fun the older they get!!! We tried out another church on Sunday (We had tried one the week before and it just wasn't a match). However, this one was great! It's called, ironically, "the Chapel" (since we had just been going to the chapel on base in Sicily for years). It's a fairly large congregation with a rock band, the usual 'mega church' stuff but my favorite was the children's area. There is a slide downstairs that looks like a train engine, a fantastic security system for checking kids in and out, and a fantastic curriculum. So Ellie is actually learning instead of sitting in the church nursery. We will probably go back this weekend to see it again on a non-Easter holiday but will also check out a couple others before we make our final decision.

Today we are headed to the zoo! Derrick wants to buy an annual pass (you only have to go twice to get your money's worth!) so I can take the girls all the time! Hooray for that! Will report on that tmrw. After weeks of being windy and in the 40's, sometimes 50's.. it's supposed to be sunny and hit 70 today so we're taking advantage of Derrick's last day off before starting his new job on Monday!!!

Here are some Easter pics. I very regretfully forgot to take a picture of my parents and all of us!

Don't mind the background, we need another coat on the red walls and obviously the tape/lack of light plates are due to the in-progress job!

They loved dying eggs! Derrick's first time doing this with us, it was a treat :)
The Easter bunny brought coloring/sticker books, rabbit ears, a chocolate bunny, a lipsmackers chapstick, and some fun character socks this year!

Just for kicks.. this is Easter last year. Notice that Eleanor is wearing the same dress this year that Valerie wore last year. sigh.. getting so big!