Our weekend started with Good Friday service. We had a wonderful Good Friday service at our church that was very powerful. And then we went out to dinner as a family and then took the rest of the evening relaxing at home. Saturday our church did their annual Easter egg hunt and Veteran's Park in Redondo. They had lots of activities of children singing and dancing. Painting were displayed that they have had their children ministry work on and those that were done by the Visual Arts Team. And story time, hula hoops, bubbles. Plus the Easter egg hunt. Penelope was more into it now then last time. But she was just around 9 months old at the time. They have roped sections for her age group. So the eggs weren't really hidden. But she caught on very quickly that there was candy inside the plastic eggs and if she didn't get them open then she just threw them back on the ground. Well a lot of them didn't open because they were taped with scotch tape closed. So after a while we just picked up the ones she threw down so she had something in her basket.
Here are a couple of pictures of Penelope at the Easter egg hunt.
Here's a picture of her playing with the bubbles afterwards. Lets just say by this time she was done and really needed a nap. But she cut her nap short.
After we went over the a karate place were we celebrated Joey's birthday party. It was lots of fun. All the kids had a blast. You can see some of the pictures here.
The following day, Easter Sunday. We went to Sunrise service with Russ, Penelope, and I and we invited Russ' dad (Pop Pop) to join us. I think he really liked it because he kept saying "I see a tradition starting". And my mom (Grandma Janet) met us there. It was wonderful to have people come to it. It is a lovely service. Our church has it at the same location as the Easter Egg hunt, Veterans Park in Redondo Beach. On one side of the park there is a outside auditorium. And as you sit there you can see the ocean.
Here are a couple pictures that I was able to find online. In the 3 years we have been going I realized I haven't taken any pictures of it. But I have a good excuse it is very early in the morning when we go. The first one is looking from the shore line at the park, to give you an idea how close the park is to the beach. The two white buildings are part of the park. The one that has a mural on it is the back side of the outside auditorium. And the bottom pictures is a picture of the front of the auditorium.
After that our whole gang went out to breakfast afterwards and then Russell and I had children's ministry obligations at the 9 am service at church. Of course at about 4 or 5 in the morning we had rolled out of bed and put on some really warm, really comfortable cloths. I had brought a change for us to look better. But we never really got time to do it. So we showed up on Easter Sunday to church in our sweat shirts and jeans. Yep. You can certainly pick us out from the crowd. But there were some people who had come to both the sunrise service to the 9 am service and we weren't the only ones. Afterwards we went to did some errands to get stuff for the Easter feast and went to Russ' parents house and changed and waited for everyone. But once Penelope woke up from her nap we changed everyone into the "Easter outfits". Yep at 12:30 after church we changed INTO our Easter outfits and took some pictures. Here are some darling pictures of our family, and mostly Penelope.
It was a wonderful Easter feast. We BBQ steak and chicken skewers and had really yummy baked beans, company's potato's (a recipe from Aunt Corkie), and fruit salad. And then for desert we had banana cream pie. I think everyone had a second helping of the pie. It was delicious.
