Easter

A week ago we had Easter on good Friday with my dad's family. Here are a few pics from that day. Grandpa and Eli were big hits with the babe, especially since Eli had electronics on him.

We also managed to find Luke's Easter basket, and he was really excited to get started on all that pretty chocolate!

This week on the 18th we celebrated Easter with my Mom's side of the family and had an Easter egg hunt. The idea was that each kid was allowed 7 eggs, but somehow the message wasn't communicated and some kids ended up with one while another kid had 16 or so. I think Luke was the only one to get 7 on the nose! He had a little help from his parents but he retrieved all his own eggs and really had a lot of fun! Afterwards it didn't take him long to figure out that if he threw the plastic eggs they would break open and spill out pretty chocolate eggs everywhere! My aunt Annette was more than happy to help him unwrap those pretty chocolate eggs so he could eat them, and since she was so happy to get him hyped up on sugar we also let her donate her bandanna to the cause of keeping his clothes relatively clean! It was a lot of fun to watch him enjoy everything.

Today was Clarence Rempel's last day as our pastor. It was a really good service and we had a time of sharing and a meal together afterwards. He has been our pastor since I was a freshman in high school, fifteen years ago. His first year there he baptized me, four years later he commissioned me for short term service to Paraguay, four years after than he married my husband and I, and last year he dedicated us and the church to raising my firstborn son in the Christian faith and gave him a life verse to help guide him. Through all those years he has also been involved in the more everyday aspects of our lives, coming out to the farm during harvest to play in the wheat with the kids and ride the combines with the men and share in a harvest meal. He has become a part of our families, well loved and obviously carrying us in his heart. Even his sermons spoke to us with love flowing through them. He didn't shy away from hard topics but spoke the truth to us and encouraged us "to continue to work out (our) salvation" as Paul would have said. He loved us enough to not let us sit back and stagnate, to keep us moving forward, to keep stretching us and helping us make ourselves better and stronger Christians through God's love and help.

In the sharing time as I was thinking about all of this and how much we would miss him I remember something my mom said to me when I left for Paraguay about missing people. She said it hurts, but that the hurting is good, because it means that you loved well and were loved well. She said that when the loneliness came to take out the book of notes that people had written me and go ahead and feel the hurt for a little bit, but not to stay there long. To instead go out and live vibrantly, to love well and be love well where I was. To do it even though I knew it would mean hurting again when I had to leave, because loving well is what makes the journey worth while, makes everything you do meaningful. Clarence and Amanda and their family loved us well, and we loved them well in return, and we will really, really, REALLY miss them. But I'm not sorry. I hope we will have another pastor who is willing to love us as well as Clarence did and I hope we can love him as well too.

This afternoon it was such a beautiful day and Greg and his dad wanted to work on the house...

They have really gotten a lot done. The trim and base boards are all up in the bathroom and office and Greg worked on staining some today.

They also have the Sheetrock up by the stairs and the new closet going well...

And this doorway used to be a lot smaller, look at the carpet on the floor to see how much it grew!

So Luke and I were feeling kind of in the way and needed a good place to go run around where Luke wouldn't constantly be in danger from the construction zone that we live in.

We decided to walk a few blocks away to an old school playground where there is a lot of grassy space to play in, it was just the ticket. We had SOOOOO much fun!

Later after supper we saw Ben and Andrea walking down the sidewalk so we chased them down and walked to the church together. Luke was supper intense, maybe a little too much ice cream??? Anyway, he wanted to RUN on the sidewalk, not walk, and he fell down at least five times pretty hard! He got a few small scrapes on his hands and one good sized one on his forehead and still was running around like a maniac so finally I said enough and made him let me carry him the rest of the way home. He actually was fine with me carrying him, I was all prepared for a fit but it never came. When we got home I noticed that his forehead was getting a goose egg so I got a wet towel and an ice cube and he and I read stories and snuggled while I held it on his forehead. He didn't like it much but as long as I was reading stories he would focus on that and was fine.