Hippity Hoppity Easter's On It's Way...

Easter kind of snuck up on me this year. I wasn't really wasn't planning on us doing anything since Scott normally has to work, but surprisingly he had the day off.

We started our Easter celebration with Easter vigil on Saturday night. I really enjoy this mass, even though it tends to be long. There's something about sitting in total darkness and then coming into the light that really brings the message home.

The other perk of going to Easter vigil is that you can somewhat sleep in on Easter Sunday. I say somewhat because Aaron came piling in at 2:30 to let me know that the Easter bunny came. I politely told him to go back to bed. Jillian was next at 6:00 to tell me the same thing. I begged for another hour. It was granted.

The kiddos tore through their baskets and the discovered that eggs were hiding all around the house and in the front yard. They had a total blast looking for the eggs! Jillian even yelled (yes, yelled, not said) that it was the best Easter ever.

Now, I love chocolate bunnies as much as the next girl, but I really like to make sure that the kiddos receive the full message of Easter, so every year we make resurrection rolls for breakfast. It's the easiest no-fuss breakfast and it gives an interactive element to the story of Easter. All you need is some crescent rolls, marshmallows, cinnamon and sugar, and butter.

Here's what you do. Melt some butter and mix together some cinnamon and sugar in a separate bowl. Unroll your dough and place on a cookie sheet. Grab your marshmallow (Jesus), dip it in the butter (oil), roll it in the cinnamon and sugar (spices) and then wrap your dough around the marshmallow (tomb). Bake according to the package and when they are done, the marshmallow is no longer in the dough (Jesus has risen). It's a great way to teach kids the story of Easter.

Since we already went to mass the night before, we were able to just hang out in the morning. Then I started on our yummy late lunch/early dinner. I made a super yummy ham with a Riesling and peach glaze, rosemary roasted potatoes, green beans and asparagus. Dessert was pumpkin pie (not very Easter, but it's Jill's favorite) with homemade whip cream.

I am not even kidding when I say that I watched my son put away some serious ham and potatoes and then 2 hours later asked what was for dinner.

We also Skyped with my parents, sister, niece and her boyfriend. I think that was the hardest I heard my kids laugh in a long time. My Dad was in rare form, too, which is alway awesome to see.

I hope everyone enjoyed their Easter as well and had a great time with family and friends. I know I am definitely thankful that this is the last big holiday for a while, not that I don't love making a huge feast and all.

What My Family Ate for Dinner - Week 8

Another week and maybe another week of not the best eating.

Here's what my family ate for dinner this week:

Sunday, April 20: Easter! We had a late lunch of ham, green beans, potato wedges and birds nest cupcakes.

I got the idea for the cupcakes from a friends Facebook post. It was actually a cake and the directions were in Italian. I brushed off my three semesters of Italian and did my best to translate the directions.

For the cupcake version I cheated and used boxed cake mix and canned frosting. I used chocolate sprinkles to create the "nest" and cadbury robin's eggs for the eggs. They were delicious and the perfect dessert for Easter.

Monday, April 21: My favorite part about Easter is the leftovers. I always make hot ham and cheese sandwiches. I put them on King's Hawaiian rolls and made a side of roasted asparagus. Yum!

Tuesday, April 22: Mexican Quinoa Bowl. This has quickly become on of Scott's favorite dishes. We love it the next day, too, which is always a plus!

Wednesday, April 23: It was my birthday so we went out to my favorite Mexican restaurant, Abuelo's. I had my favorite, the carnita enchilada and maybe a margarita...or two.

Thursday, April 24: I had an acupuncture appointment (I KNOW!), so we did leftovers.

Friday, April 25: I met my friend Michelle for dinner at Chili's to celebrate my birthday.

Saturday, April 26: We were supposed to have turkey burger casserole tonight, however, we were in the garage doing a lot of work (you know, when it's 90 degrees), so we opted to have pizza brought in instead.

It's not the worst menu we've had, but it's not the best. I should mention this does not include the various birthday lunches I was treated to. I have a lot of green goodness in my future to flush out all of this!

Easter 2014

I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter! We started our Easter celebration last night at Easter vigil. There is something so wonderful about sitting in complete darkness and then slowly lighting the way. Well, it's wonderful until your daughter jerks the candle and hot wax hits your hand. I digress...

 Easter morning started  bright and early with the kiddos. I'll give you one guess on which one was up first.

Thankfully, Jill waited until sometime after 6 to wake us up. The Easter bunny did a pretty decent job considering that maybe the bunny put off purchasing said gifts until, I don't know, yesterday.

I'm just glad the kiddos are not huge candy fans, so I...errrrr..the bunny could stuff their baskets with Z bars and gummy bunnies.

After the bunny baskets, we made our traditional Easter breakfast, Resurrection Rolls.

We do this every year to tie in the story of Easter.
We take mini marshmallows (Jesus), dip them in melted butter (the oil), roll them in cinnamon and sugar (the spices) and roll them into a crescent roll (the tomb).  After they are done baking, you open them and the marshmallow is gone. It's a great visual for the kids.

After hanging out, we headed over to Mimi and PawPaw's for a late lunch. I'm pretty sure I ate close to my body weight in ham.

Thankfully, I saved room for the yummy dessert I made. Okay, I cheated and used boxed cake mix and frosting, but they were pretty adorable.

All in all, it was a pretty great and relaxing Easter Sunday. I hope your day was just as wonderful and relaxing!

Easter Weekend

We had a fantastic Easter weekend! We started on Saturday by coloring eggs, which the kids love to do. 

Yup, Momma was ballsy wearing a white shirt and dyeing eggs with four year old twins. Thankfully, no clothing was harmed in the dyeing process. 

I'm not totally sure what we are going to do with all of these eggs. I, personally, do not like hard boiled eggs and while Scott likes them, I do not see him eating a dozen of them. 

We also went to Easter Vigil, something we have not been to since Scott joined the Catholic Church 4 years ago. 

There is something about the Easter Vigil that is so moving and really drives home the message of Easter. The kids only lasted 10 minutes into mass, having the lights out will do that to you.

Since we went to mass on Saturday night, we were able to take our time on Sunday morning. Jill was up at 5:00 a.m., yes, 5:00 a.m., to let us know that the Easter Bunny had arrived. I'm promptly told her it was still bedtime and she asked if she could just check. I may or may not have told her if she got out of bed that the Easter Bunny would come back and take away her basket. I'm sure I will pay for that in years of therapy later, but it was 5:00 a.m. on a Sunday. When she has a child (or two) just like her she will understand and thank me. Yes, thank me. 

Jill went ahead and woke up Aaron around 6:30 and we were able to check out the baskets.

I love that Mr. Bunny took it easy on the candy this year. Graham crackers are cooler anyway. The kids seemed to agree. 

We also had an Easter egg hunt in the house. We couldn't really do it outside yet since you know the whole backyard is still a hot mess from the storm. The kids still had a blast though.

They also helped me make resurrection rolls, a tradition I started with them last year. 

The rolls are a great tool to help explain the story of the resurrection to the kids. They are also pretty freakin' delicious.

After hanging out for a while we headed over to Mimi and PawPaw's house and guess what, the Easter Bunny visited there too. 

After lunch we went to our favorite frozen yogurt place to have some dessert and on the way back to the car, I was able to snap this sweet photo:

I mean, really, how cute is this?! 

We had such a great Easter weekend and hope you did too!

Easter Weekend

I hope everyone had a great Easter weekend, I know we did! Saturday morning the kiddos and I made the tie-dye cupcakes I mentioned on Friday. These were really great to make together because the kids were able to pick and mix their own color. Jill, naturally, picked red, Aaron picked yellow, so that left me with green.

They even put all the liners in the muffin pans for me. I overheard Aaron say that he couldn't do it, it was too hard and he didn't want to, and Jill replied, "Just do it Aaron! I did it!". Sigh. Here's the finished product:

They're pretty yummy, I think we will be making these a lot.

Saturday night we dyed our Easter eggs. I baked the eggs this year, something I saw on Pinterest. I think it worked out well, I don't know, I don't eat hard boiled eggs unless they are in a super delicious Cobb salad. We had a marble egg kit, but seriously that mess was ridiculous, so we just did the plain colors. Naturally, I forgot to take a photo of the eggs after dyeing them. I did manage to snag a picture of the cupcake/frosting break after dyeing the eggs:

The kids were super excited about the Easter bunny coming and happily left him a bowl of carrots and a note. Aaron came in first thing yelling that EB came and Jill could not get over that he ate all of those carrots.

For breakfast I made Resurrection rolls. I found the recipe on Nicole O'Dell's site, it's super simple and they are really delicious. Plus, it's a great visual for helping explain Easter to the kiddos.

Church was our next stop, and for real, it was packed. The kids did super well though, considering how busy it was. I, on the other hand, did my best not to look around otherwise I would have panicked at the amount of people. Our church is still in the fundraising stage to build on our property, so we are in a temporary location inside a strip mall. We can really only fit 300 and well...we had a lot more than that on Sunday.

Don't we make an adorable family?!

After Church we headed to Mimi and Paw Paw's for lunch. I'm not even going to lie, Easter is my favorite food holiday because this girl loves ham leftovers. I promise you I will have hot ham and cheese sandwiches all week. After lunch we found out that EB stopped at Mimi and Paw Paw's house too! Paw Paw led the kids on a hunt all through the house to find the baskets.
They were so excited and couldn't wait to play with all of the fun toys EB left!

We had such a great weekend and hope you did as well!

Mommy and Me Monday: The Easter Edition

Hosted by Krystyn at Really, Are You Serious?

I know I know, I haven't done Mommy and Me Monday in like, um, forever. Anyway, it's been a busy weekend. Saturday we colored eggs with the kids, well Scott did the dipping and the kids picked the colors.Didn't they do a great job?

Sunday was busy too, the Easter bunny came to our house and the kiddos were basically in love with everything they got. Since Scott worked yesterday we met him at Church for the 4pm mass, which actually worked out well because it was not crowded at all. After mass we went to Mimi and PawPaw's for dinner, and guess what? The Easter Bunny came there too!

It was a long day for sure, and Aaron was not in the best of moods for the majority of the day, but we managed to snag this photo of the three of us:

Can I tell you how obsessed I am with Jill's dress? That was my find at TJMaxx the other day. She looks so pretty in it!

Play along with Krystyn at Really, Are You Serious?

Happy Easter!

I hope everyone has a blessed and happy Easter! I'm going to post photos later, but for now, enjoy:

Happy Easter!

I hope everyone has had a very happy Easter! We definitely had a very busy day, starting with our very first egg coloring. I have to tell you the second those color tabs hit the vinegar I was immediately taken back to my childhood. Does that happen to anyone else?


The kids did really well, and there were only minor stains, which in toddler world is a huge success!

We waited to do baskets until Mimi and Paw Paw got here. Did you know that the Easter Bunny left baskets for Aaron and Jill at their house too??? Lucky ducks! He never left baskets for me at my grandparents houses. Here are the ones from our house:


I don't know who was more excited about the My Little Pony's, me or Jill. I will admit while the Easter Bunny was putting together their baskets they may or may not have spent a large amount of time brushing said pony's hair to ensure proper fluffiness and shine. May or may not...


Instead of doing a big dinner we had a big breakfast. I made cinnamon rolls, a Dutch baby (apple oven pancake) and Mimi's sausage balls. It was super yummy!

Hope you had a great day and that you remembered that is was about more than chocolate and Easter bunnies.

Happ Easter!

Happy Easter everyone!
Yesterday was a full day for us! We went to T-Rex for lunch with my Dad and it was packed! But we did manage to get there before the bulk of the crowd did, so we lucked out. I also got to finally eat a burger (I gave up beef/red meat for Lent) and honestly.... I could easily go another 40 days without it. Here are some photos and video from the day...

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Last night we went to the Easter Vigil mass because Scott was completing the R.C.I.A process and becoming a full member of the Catholic Church (thank you again Lani for babysitting!). I have never been to the Easter Vigil before, all I knew was that it was a long service. The first portion of it is in the dark and we all hold candles, then the Father Jean baptized 6 candidates and then confirmed and gave Holy Communion to 4 candidates. It was a beautiful service and I am so proud of Scott and could not be happier! I am very glad that he is apart of the same Church as myself and the kids! Here are some photos from the service...

Scott being confirmedScott and my DadMy Dad, Father Jean and Scott

This morning we did Easter baskets with the kids, I wish I had more photos to show you, but apparently my underwear decided to make an appearance in 90% of the photos...yay memories! But here are the G rated photos...

Today I'm making dinner for everyone and we're just going to relax I think. No big plans that I know of! Hope everyone has a very happy and very blessed Easter!