He is Risen, He is Risen indeed!

After breakfast on the porch, we gave Daniel his Easter basket, I'm sure he was thinking, "What?! Mommy is letting me eat chocolate for breakfast?!"




I think he likes it!!



After breakfast, we got dressed, and snapped a few pictures before heading off to church.



Love these two handsome southern gentlemen that I am privileged to share life with!! Love their seersucker suits!



I have tried to talk Mike into wearing a bow tie for a long time, and after 8 years, he succumbed, on his own volition! He came home Saturday and said, "I have a surprise for you!" Out from his bag he pulls this bow tie, ahhhhh, I die!! LOVE IT!!


Daniel has a sweet, special relationship with each of my sisters. After we've been with my sisters, he will ask, "where's Ashy?" "Where's Yara?" I'll respond with "at work, in there hometown" and he will say, "but why?" :) We are to the why stage now, about everything! :)


The Easter family portrait. We took more pictures after church. Church was AWESOME, the music was AWESOME, and it was PACKED!!! We did all get to sit together but were up in the balcony. I loved seeing so many of our friends there! We kept Daniel with us in the sanctuary for the music and he was good.


My mom wanted a picture of all of us looking at Daniel, and we were giving her a hard time but now I'm glad we did it, it turned out cute, he can be such a ham! There's no shortage of attention for this boy when our families are in town!!


I wonder where Daniel gets his silliness from?!



While we were waiting for all the final food preparations, the kids did some crafts on the back porch with foam stickers.


Ahhh, melt my heart!! These two usually love each other very much, but apparently Harper was over Daniel's hugs at this point. Haha!




Lucy and Ellie working on their crafts.



We also played a few games in the yard with the dyed Easter eggs, (LOL, Julie and I were trying to think up as many variations of games you could play with an egg!) in this one, we had the kids line up by Julie, and they were supposed to roll their eggs down the lawn until they crossed the finish line. I'm lucky I didn't get pelted by a hard boiled egg! Ha!






Another game we played was we made the kids carry their egg on a spoon in their mouth across the finish line. Ellie's got the hang of it! These next few pictures crack me up, each one has a different style!


Lucy has her spoon a little to the left, concentrating hard.



And Ainsley...hers is almost falling out, to the right, head tilted back! Love it!! :)


Finally after all our games, it was time to eat! Here is picture of the grown ups table. Again this year I got to use mu and Mike's grandmother's china. I found these hollow chocolate bright colored eggs at Costco and thought they were pretty, so each place setting got one.


This white cake with strawberry frosting is the one I found last year on Edie's blog, it's made with 1/2 cup of homemade strawberry freezer jam, which is divine!! I think it turned out great!



After lunch, the dads hid the eggs for an egg hunt, we had the littles in the back yard and the bigger kids in the front.



Aubrey, Daniel, and Harper checking out their loot! Note the chocolate oozing out of Harper's mouth, awesome!! I think she enjoyed her candy!!



It was a wonderful day and we were so happy to have our family and some of our friends over! What a privelge it is to be a daughter of our Risen King!! Hope you all enjoyed your celebrations as much as we enjoyed ours!!

Easter Weekend

My family drove over to spend Easter weekend with us this year. The newest addition to our family, Shannon, my sister, Laura's fiance joined us this year. Laura, Shannon, and Ashley got busy in the kitchen making some treats for our Easter dinner on Sunday.



What's the big deal, 2 birds in the nest?! I guess they're love birds. :)



As soon as Daniel woke up from his nap, we got busy working on dying Easter eggs on the back porch. Nani sent Daniel some Easter books a few weeks before Easter and one of them talked about dying Easter eggs so I think Daniel was excited to get to do it this year.






Ashley, Daniel, and Mimi display their finished work.






Mike made a DE-LICIOUS Greek dinner for us Saturday night. He made Greek style lamb roast, potatoes, asparagus, a greek salad, spanikopida, and homemade Tzaziki sauce.
Mike grew up with close family friends who were Greek. He has very fond memories of Easters spent with the family and eating this very meal. He even has a story about eating "delicacies" like goat testicle soup. Uhhhhh, I think I'll pass, thanks! Mike also brought home some Baklava for dessert from a local bakery. The dinner was a hit, everyone loved it!! Including Daniel!



I'm a little hesitant to post this next picture, it's funny... The weather was very nice Saturday night, so we ate on the porch. After dinner, we found a lizard inside the porch (there are a lot of them this time of year on our porch) and Papa put it on his ear like an earring. Daniel thought it was funny. :)


Daniel didn't really want to touch or hold the lizard though. Just so you know, we let the lizard go after we were done looking at it, I don't believe he was harmed at all.




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A busy Saturday!

I love this time of year because not only is the weather GORGEOUS, but there are so many fun things to do! Back on Saturday, April 16th, we had an action packed day! Our day began with the annual community Easter egg hunt & BBQ our church puts on at our church property, complete with egg hunts for all ages, bounce houses, pony rides and petting zoo, face painting, hay ride, pie contest and delicious bbq.



We arrived late, as is our usual family custom, and literally walked very fast, and practically threw him into the roped off area for his age groups egg hunt, and he was off! He wanted to open each egg he found to see what was inside. He didn't get the idea that you're supposed to fill your basket as fast as you can and then check out your loot. Oh well, I'd rather him not eat all that candy anyway!



Our family photo!



Next we were off to pet the chicks! These boys LOVED this!!! Tyler was so excited to see that chick his momma was holding!



Wyatt was very brave and wanted to hold one, he was very gentle with it.



This picture cracks me up! I love Daniel's expression and Logan in the back ground looking on, not sure what to think of it! haha!! I can just hear Daniel saying, "Hello little chick! I LOVE chicks!"



Our friend, Katie, taking a ride on the pony... she looks concerned because I think the horse did it's business and Katie's momma, Amy was trying not to step in it!



After a fun morning at the property, and a yummy lunch, we headed home for naps before taking Daniel to his FIRST experience inside the FSU stadium at the spring game. Daniel was just taking it all in when we first got there.



We sat with a bunch of our friends and their kids, which made the whole experience so much more fun! Baby Ethan, 6 months old, snug as a bug up against his mommy with his thumb, was so good!



I love these kids!! They were so cute and pretty good for the whole game. Of course Aunty Rachel being armed with lots of snacks helped too!



I think Daniel was getting a lesson on cheering. He loves to clap and got a kick out of everyone doing the war chant!




Ava and Ellie are sweet friends! I wish I had taken a picture of Ava's outfit, her momma, Meredith made it & it was adorable!! She had on a garnet and gold twirl skirt with an appilqued spear shirt. The spear was half garnet and half gold sewn onto a black background, I LOVED IT!!! I'm definitely going to half to attempt making one one of these days, hopefully before this fall!


Brian and Aubrey, Aubs was hamming it up here! Love that girl! She and Daniel were born 2 days apart and we have pictures of them together in their bassinets in the hospital. :)



I think Daniel had a fun time, and it was nice because we could spread out a little more than at a regular season game where you're packed into the stadium like sardines! We ended our fun day with a yummy mexican dinner with our friends! So thankful for days like these!! Good times and GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO NOLES ------------------------->

Our new annual tradition

On Saturday, April 9th, Mike, Daniel & I took a little day trip to the strawberry farm that Daniel & I went to last year.




A lot of these pictures are similar to last year's pictures, but Daniel is just a year older.




A lot of the strawberries were HUGE, and SO sweet and juicy!!










My sisters, Ashley and Laura, and Laura's fiance, Shannon drove up and met us for part of the morning. Daniel was very excited to see them!





This peacock was displaying all his colors for us for a long time, he was so pretty! This is funny to me because my sisters and scuz (our nickname for our cousin who is like a sister to us) tell me that I used to not like peacocks when I was younger...I have no recollection of this dislike. haha, maybe they made it up. :)






Daniel was in love with these baby bunnies, he wanted to pet them for a LONG time!!!
I finally had to make him move on so some other little kid could have a turn.







Daniel had such a FUN time, as did all of us!! We picked 2 pints of big delicious juicy strawberries.



Daniel loves his Aunts so much and they love him too, it makes my heart happy to see them interact with each other.



It was a great day and we want to go back before the season is over. I've made strawberry jam, strawberry shortcake, and this past weekend, made a cake with strawberry buttercream icing. I'll have to post pictures of those soon. Yum, yum, yum!