Easter traditions

The Easter Bunny comes to our house Saturday morning and we love it that way!  We get all the presents and candy out of the way so that we can spend Sunday celebrating the resurrection of our Savior. 

This year the Easter Bunny brought Grace some cute new spring clothes, 2 pairs of shoes (always a huge hit with my girly girl), a pineapple (another favorite), a chocolate bunny, Peanut Butter eggs and a few Cadbury eggs.  He knows us so well!  Skip the jelly beans and stay with the chocolate!

He must have been running a little late because we looked all over the apartment and couldn't find the basket anywhere and then we heard a knock on the door!  Grace peeked outside and this is what she found!

After all that excitement, we decided to get some breakfast at good ole' Denny's and then hit the Mukilteo beach for the day- one of our all time favorite places to go around here.  I seriously LOVE living so close to the water.  We could spend all day just throwing rocks into the sound!

Then we came home and made Resurrection cookies.  (link to recipe here)  There is a scripture and an action that goes with each ingredient and so you read the scripture and do the action and add the ingredient.  For example, when we read about Christ being beaten by the Roman Soliers before being crusified, we take a small bag of walnuts, which represent his body, and we break them up by hitting them with a wooden spoon, then we add them to the recipe.  I wasn't sure how Grace would do, but she took every word to heart and talked about it for weeks.  Anyway, after adding all the symbolic ingredients, you make them into mounds and place them in the oven and "seal" it with a piece of tape.  The next morning, you find take the cookies out of the oven and bite into the cookie to find that it is hollow just like the tomb was on Easter morning.  It was really fun and something that I think our family will do each year. 

Ready for church in our new Easter digs.  Oh, I love this girl!