An Easter Full of Kites and Cows

Hallelujah!  Christ is risen, conquering sin and death and hell!  What better reason could we have to celebrate than this?  Our Easter celebrations and traditons include gift giving, dressing up, praise singing, feasting and fellowship.  We love Easter every year, but this year's was an especially good one.

Shortly after waking up, the girls dove into their Easter baskets.  Here they show off their favorites: matching nightgowns for them and their best stuffed animals and butterfly wings. 

Then we got ready for church.  We are blessed every year to have hand-me-down dresses from a church friend with two older daughters.  We have several sizes of these fancy princess dresses lined up in the back of our closet.  You can't wear such a fancy dress without fancy hair, though!  We girls monopolized the bathroom with a hot roller party yesterday morning.

In the afternoon, we headed to the California VM Easter Party, an annual tradition we look so forward to.  Once again, hundreds of Easter eggs were hidden and spread across the lawn and the kids had a ball collecting them.

Delia didn't even have the self-control to finish the hunt.  She just declared herself done, so she could plop down and check out her loot.  Besides candy, the kids came away with lots of little toys and about $3 in quarters. 

Our hostess has been collecting kites for a year.  After the egg hunt, she delighted everyone when she handed out a kite to each of the 20 kids.  Our day was just breezy enough to make it perfect kite-flying weather.

When I wasn't tossing Buzz Lightyear and Elmo back into the air or unwrapping Delia from her kite string, I loved stepping back to look at all the kites in the sky and all the kids and parents in the yard having a great time together.

When our lines started crossing, as 20 kite lines are prone to do, we spread out into the hay field.  I just love this view too: kids, kites, cows and mountains.

Since our hosts own a dairy, we had to stop and visit the cows.  Then, a giant potluck dinner, with tons of salads, fruits and, of course, ham buns, ended a great Easter together.