HIs First Easter

This was a lot of firsts all in one for the Li'l Emperor this week.  It started when we had our first family portraits as a family of EIGHT!  Eight y'all.  Go ahead and feel bad for the photographer.  She should be getting her Sainthood notification very shortly! 

Just in case anyone in the area is interested, we used Lynn Cobb.  Check her out at her website.  She is awesome!  Not only did she take amazing pictures of our large family, but she did it with an unbelievable amount of patience.  I asked her to do them at the upper end of Church St. in downtown because I think that area captures the essence of Charleston living.  As a family, we love to walk around downtown, so it made sense to us. 

Well, anyway.  Asher did great!  All the kids did a wonderful job and Lynn really captured us.  You can take a peek by clicking on this link.  http://www.pictage.com/1032845  You have to sign the guestbook to view the pictures.  Don't be afraid.  Your information doesn't go anywhere and the only people that can see it are the photographer and me.  Lynn already said that she doesn't even look.

Then of course, it was Easter.  I can't believe so much time has flown by since Asher came home.  It's been over two months since we were in China and meeting him for the first time! 

You would not believe the amount of English he uses now.  It's still mixed with Mandarin, which is very cute if I don't say so! 

We attended Church on Saturday Night which is pretty normal for us for Easter.  Our Church does an amazing outreach service at Boone Hall every year for Easter Sunday.  It's a wonderful tradition and we used to volunteer to help in some capacity every year.  We haven't in a while and a big part of that is our large family and the fact that the littlest ones have really bad reactions to bug bites.  There are usually about 5000 people in attendance that morning and I believe it's on the gnat calendar way in advance because they attend by the droves! I don't know about the gnats where you live, but Charleston gnats have teeth!

Well, I don't know if Steve {our rector} noticed or not, but part way through the service Saturday Night, a bored Li'l Emperor thought it would be cute to start imitating him.  Steve uses his hands while he speaks.  So Asher started by coping all Steve's hand motions.  Next thing I know, he's repeating the last few words of every sentence Steve says, to go with the hand motions.  No amount of shushing could make him stop either.  I finally had to threaten {between giggles} to take him out to the van.  That did it! I know the people in front of us were happy. 

Sunday morning found us bright and early with some excited kids.  Asher was of course, clueless.  This year I didn't put Easter Baskets on the table for the kids.  I wanted them to focus on the Resurrection first.  With that in mind, we did a Resurrection Egg Hunt, complete with Bible verses that explained the story of Easter.

The older children all took turns to read from the Bible.

And everyone got in on the action of locating all the Resurrection Eggs too!

Each egg contained a visual of the Easter Story.  A toy donkey, a cup, a leather whip, a crown of thorns....you get the picture.  And they got the picture, which is the important part!

It wasn't about the hunt, it was about the story.

Then after a some play time and cooking time, we had a lovely dinner together. 

And surprise!  Lizzie made it to dinner.  I believe this is the first Easter dinner she's been too since sometime in high school.  Sadly, it was also the last time we will see her for a while.

Lizzie will finish her junior year here at College of Charleston and move back to Lexington to find a job for the summer.  Pray for her and her other family as this summer is set to be a rough one.  Her step-father will be deployed overseas at the end of May for a year.  This is the first time this has happened and I don't think any of them really know what to expect.



The kids had a hug fest before she headed back to campus to finish all her exams and papers.

While Paul drove Lizzie back, I had the chance to do a little egg dying with the little ones.  I didn't buy a ton of eggs this year.  Each little one ended up with only three eggs to dye, but they had a blast anyway!



Surprisingly, Asher really enjoyed this activity.  Even more surprisingly, he did not make a huge mess!



Isabel is the reason we can't just forgo the egg dying.  She really gets into it!

And some how comes up with some masterpieces!  All she had to get this was a wax candle and the egg dye.  I have no idea what she did!

We ended the day with a good ole fashioned candy egg hunt!



I hope each and every one of you had a glorious Easter Sunday with family and friends.  I know we did!  I assure you Asher did.  He consumed more candy yesterday than he has since he left China! Thankfully, there is just a little left and then this is going to be a candy free home for a while.