Easter

Well we had a pretty busy and fun easter weekend. We started the celebration on Friday night by going to the Easter Pageant at the Mesa Temple. It was our second time seeing it and once again we were very impressed. They do a great job. It is the biggest outdoor easter pageant in the nation. It is very cool!

Our family at the pageant

Rick, Tyler, and his friend David from school that came to the pageant with us posing with one of the cast members.

A picture of the performance. It is blurry and hard to see but they are all up on a big stage on the lawn of the temple and those are angels with trumpets glowing on the top.


On Saturday morning we took Tyler to an Easter egg hunt at Midwestern University (one of the colleges here in Phoenix). It doesn't rain very often here in the desert but it did on Saturday and it rained hard so the hunt got moved indoors and it was very very crowded. They divided it up by age groups. Tyler was in the 0-3 group. They made all the kids line up along the outside edge of the wall and then they yelled go. This was the first time Tyler had really competed against kids his own age and I have never seen Rick so anxious. If you know Rick very well you know that he tends to be a wee bit competitive about things. It makes me a little nervous for when the kids get older and involved in more activities. I guess we will see what happens. Tyler did really good though and ended up getting quite a few eggs.

Tyler at the egg hunt. Really the eggs were just spread all over the floor, they didn't have to hunt very hard to find them. The funny thing was that the other little boy in the picture started putting his eggs in Tylers basket. I guess he saw Tyler frantically trying to get all the eggs so he thought he would help him out a little.

Tyler counting his victory

Smiling with the results. He was proud of himself and so was daddy.

Of course you can't have a good egg hunt without an appearance from the easter bunny

I wasn't sure how Tyler would react to the big furry easter bunny, but surprisingly he was very excited. He went right up to him in his face and yelled "hi easter bunny" then he climbed up on his lap. I put Logan next to him and snapped the picture. Tyler is smiling behind his hands. I think he was so excited he could hardly contain himself.

The easter bunny was supposed to be just for the kids but then at the last minute Rick couldn't resist jumping in to get his picture taken with the easter bunny too. As you can see from the picture he is pretty excited about it.

What we walked away with. All in all it was a pretty good morning

That night we colored easter eggs. Tyler took it very serious this year.

Here he is coloring with a crayon on one of his eggs. Obviously he is in deep concentration. He seemed to have a system worked out and wanted one egg in each bowl. He didn't want any help from us.

The boys coloring eggs

Tyler showing off the finished product. He was quite pleased.

Also on a side note, Saturday night we had the missionaries over for dinner. They arrived about a half hour early so dinner wasn't quite ready yet. Well I thought Rick was out in the living room just talking to them while I was in the kitchen but when I peeked around the corner this is what I saw.



Rick glorying in his old wrestling days on this poor helpless missionary. At first I was surprised but then not really. Apparently the elder had asked Rick to show him some wresting moves. The next thing I know Rick's asking them if they want to see his old wrestling tapes from high school. That's when I decided I had better step in and save the missionaries.
A little F.Y.I. I always tease Rick that he is like Uncle Rico from Napolean Dynamite. Living in the past and glorying in all his old sports victories. He has all his old high school tapes of every game of every sport he ever played. He has them memorized and occasionally I will randomly catch him watching them. Telling me that if coach would have put him in the fourth quarter they would have won state :) Anyway this is where the nickname Rico comes from.


After dinner the missionaries had some time before their first appointment of the night so the next thing I know Rick and the missionaries are challenging each other to a game of chess

Don't get me wrong. It wasn't all fun and games. We had a nice dinner, talked "deep doctrine" and they even shared a spiritual thought with us before they left. We had a lot of good laughs though.