Celebrating Jesus

We celebrated Jesus' resurrection with lots of family, fun, and praise last weekend! We had an amazing church service. We kicked off with 3 baptisms...praise the Lord for those! I got to sing "It Is Finished" with the choir and I could hardly sing for praising His HOLY name! Our youth did a couple of really great skits. One was to one of my favorite songs, "Do You Still Feel the Nails?". I didn't get pictures but my friend, Kelly, did and she has a GREAT blog post about it. She also has one I mentioned a few posts ago about a special event that happened in their family. her son was saved a couple of weeks ago and he was baptized on Easter Sunday. You really need to follow the links at the bottom of this post to read those stories. Ok, back to our day...We had so much fun I had a hard time choosing pictures to share. Since you know I take hundreds, that is a job in itself! Some are not in chronological order and normally that would drive me bonkers but I wanted to start with my sweet blessings in their Easter best.

Up from the grave HE AROSE...With a mighty triumph oer His foes...
He AROSE a VICTOR from the dark domain...


And He lives FOREVER with His Saints to reign...

He Arose! He Arose!

Hallelujah!

CHRIST AROSE!

Golly Pete, these are some CUTE KIDDOS!

Now, let's get down to business...

After we cleaned up from Cooper's party and had dinner, we colored eggs. I think this is the most fun the kids have ever had coloring eggs. They did great and I was sad we had only boiled one dozen. I could have let them go on and on they were having such fun! Ok, you need to know that I had this really cute collage made of all the unposed, action shots of they egg coloring and I just deleted it! Man, that really makes me sad because it was cute but since it is taking me a week to write this post, I will just lick my wounds and go on...

Before the kids were allowed out of bed on Easter morning, we read the REAL Easter story of Christ resurrection. We reminded them that prizes on Easter morning are a way to celebrate the gift of eternal life that comes from Jesus' life, death, burial and RESURRECTION!

We had lunch with MawMaw, Poppa, Fred, & Sister. Poor Claudia was sneezing away from all the blooms. We had a beautiful day for Easter!

After lunch, we went to Juna's for a little while. The kids hunted eggs with Doris and Brooke. They were in a heated competition over those eggs!

We headed up to PawPaw and Nana's later that afternoon for dinner and an egg hunt with all the cousins. It was a great way to end a wonderful Easter Sunday!

Steven was my best friend growing up. We were the closest cousins could be. We were 2 months and 10 days apart and went from 1st-12th grade together. We lived on the same dirt road just three houses apart. We spent countless hours together doing so many fun things. We rarely see each other now but Steven is still so precious to my heart and he always will be. We have shared so much over the years. I barely have any childhood memories that do not include him. His son, Luke, looks just like him. I LOVE to watch Luke play because it is like going back in time and sitting beside Steven again when we were kids.

T.C. & Courtney

Getting ready to run for the eggs!
Claudia found one!
My sweet Lisa...again, a cousin I have always been close to...wait, we have all always been so close. There are so many of us on my daddy's side. We have so much fun together and love getting to see each other.
Look who found the prize egg.

He is showing off his $5 he got!

I hope you all had an amazing Easter. Now, head on over to Polka Dots & Prayers at www.polkadotsandprayers.blogspot.com and read her Easter posts. She has great pictures of the skits the kids did.