(late) Easter greetings to you!

The past 3 weeks have been a whirlwind. From sickness throughout our family, to Charlie's birthday, from a quick beach trip, to a field trip, from Easter egg hunts to Easter worship, we haven't known up from down! Obviously, my blogging has suffered from the craziness, and if you are still reading, I have more posts to come! But, I wanted to go on and post about Easter because its special meaning to our family!

Lots of our days are spent in the car--going to and from school, church, or out and about. And much of our days over the past month, was spent listening to A Very Veggie Easter CD in our car. I actually don't mind most of the Veggie Tales music. It's tolerable and cute and teaches great lessons--if you can understand them. This particular CD was a big favorite for the boys and even me! One of my all-time favorite hymns, Christ the Lord is Risen Today, is on the CD and my boys were thrilled that we sang it in church on Sunday! But, my favorite part of the whole CD was the song "Hear the Bells Ringing." It is an incredible praise song and you can't help but sing it at the top of your lungs! Here are the lyrics:

Hear the bells ringing

their singing that we can be born again

hear the bells ringing they're singing

Christ is risen from the dead

the angel up on the tombstone

said he is risen

just as he said

quickly now go tell his disciples

that Jesus Christ is no longer dead

joy to the world, he is risen, hallelujah

he's risen hallelujah

he's risen hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

I loved the conversations that came up with my boys when this song came on. All about Jesus dying for our sins and rising again to save US!!! I will admit that our worship experience on Easter Sunday morning at church was not as worshipful as I had hoped it would be. It seems that our oldest 2 treasures had sugar poured down their throats along with triple shot espressos, and they were wild! Pretty humbling when we so long for their hearts to be captured by the Lord and try in vain to teach them to obey us, so in time, they will obey the Lord. That's the thing though--all Chad and I can do is plant seeds. The Lord must do (and will do) the rest! One comforting comment came from a woman behind us (my parents age) who greeted me with, "You are doing a great job!" She, knowing full and well we had our hands full, was gracious and encouraging. All of that to say, while I was hoping to put more into worshipping and hoping our little ones might actually hear something our minister said, I can be assured that this seed-planting (listening to and talking about Jesus dying for our sins and so much nore) is what our Lord is asking us to do.

In our house, we dyed eggs (and attempted to wait patiently). . .

 hunted for them . . .

and received treats from the Easter bunny this Easter. . . 

but most importantly, we were thankful and humbled, that our Savior took His place on the cross because he loves us more than we will ever be able to comprehend. Joy to the world! He is risen!