"Life is what happens in-between the pictures"

I heard this quote about six years ago while watching a movie. I don't remember the name of the movie, but I do remember that I thought the quote was quite profound. The reason I bring this up is because we didn't get any Easter pictures this year. We spent Easter at my mom's house in Bancroft, Idaho, and we forgot to bring extra batteries for the camera. If we did take pictures, this is what they would have been:

Picture #1--Making Jello eggs with my mom. This is a tradition that we had while growing up. We have been lucky enough to be with my mom for the past 3 years, so I am not sure if my children remember an Easter without Jello Eggs. She is a die-hard Jello egg maker, no plastic egg molds for her. She uses real egg shells which she painstakingly removes the contents through a little hole cracked out of the top.

Picture #2--Coloring eggs around the kitchen table. Maddie colored half of them because she was so speedy. She also doesn't know what it means to lower an egg gently into the dye, as a result half of them were cracked by the time we were finished.

Picture #3--Cramming all six of us onto her little living room floor and couches to sleep. 5 of us in our sleeping bags and Lucy in her portacrib.

Picture #4--After thinking everybody was sound asleep; sneaking the Easter baskets through the living room across a squeaky floor into a back room to be filled, only to be surprised by Hannah's eyes popping open just at the right second. I froze like a deer in the headlights, and the only thing I could think to say was "I'm just going to move these for a minute, I'll put them right back."

Picture #5--Johnny waking up on Easter morning and spotting the first plastic filled Easter egg. The first words out of his mouth were "I think I'm seeing things." He got a head start in finding them because Hannah took a while to wake up (this is the girl who is convinced she never sleeps, she only rests her eyes.) They had so much fun searching for eggs, my mom had a lot of interesting places to hide them after years and years of acquiring little nick-knacks.

Picture #6--Hannah, Johnny and Madeline with their Easter umbrellas, we did umbrellas this year instead of Sunday clothes because they have been wanting umbrellas forever and they have plenty of Sunday clothes. They have come in very handy so far.

Picture #7--Going to stake conference with my mom and sitting on a dark stage in fold-up chairs. After 5 trips out with wiggly Lucy who was determined to crawl off the stage, three trips to the potty, and a full container of cheerios flung on the people behind us, Hannah decided that Stake Conference was probably about 9 hours long.

This was an Easter to remember, and once the exhaustion wore off, I realized that these are memories I will cherish forever. Thanks mom, for taking us in for the weekend and making it that much sweeter.