Easter Time

I have been absent from my blog for quite some time and we've had a lot of fun times I've forgotten to blog about. I may fill you in at some point, but for now I'm just going to pick up from the present and try my best at continuing to blog from here on out. We'll see how it goes =-)

We had a fabulous Easter weekend celebrating our Christ's resurrection! Tom and I really wanted to remember the Lord this Easter season and prepare our hearts for Easter by reading chapters in the Gospels, Isaiah, and reading commentaries in a devotional book called "Jesus 90 days with the One and Only" by Beth Moore. We read these together on Friday afternoon and then went out to dinner and attended Good Friday service with Tom's mom and her husband. It was a nice service with good time of worship.

It is really important to us to truly remember the reason why we celebrate Easter. I really don't want to confuse Hans with mixed meanings of the holiday, but want him to know the true story of Christ taking our sins upon Him (who knew no sin) and dying on the cross for us. And that, on the third day (Easter), he rose again and still lives today! And because of this, we no longer have to live separate from God, but can have life through Jesus Christ. This is the very truth I am meant to live by every day and I am meant to not only teach this to Hans but to show this to Hans every day. I pray that Hans will absorb all of the things we teach him and show him and will one day choose to give his life to Jesus.

We had a great Easter with the whole Kobie clan....with a whole bunch of Kobie cousins!!! My sister's kids were here for the whole week leading up to Easter so my mom and dad had fun activities lined up all week long. We joined up with them at Grandma and Papa's house and we also went the Shoreview Community Center for some fun in the pool! With all of the adults in the pool with the kids, we, unfortunately, don't have any photos to show you of our fun time at the pool, but let it be known that it was a BLAST! Hans loved it and even got to go down the water slide with his big cousin, Emily! And Tom and Emily went down the big (and slightly scary) "shark attack" slide! We had dinner there together afterwards and the kids were wiped out from all of the water fun together!

Now, on to Easter morning....Before church, Hans hunted for his Easter Basket....

(note: golf club in his hand...always)

Hans continued munching on his easter snacks throughout the morning.

Easter family photo...

After church, Tom headed to work and Hans and I went over to my parents. The cousins had their lunch at the "kid table" but Hans has to wait another year to join them so he ate with mommy and his aunties, uncles, grandma, and papa in the dining room. Again, no pictures, but the table was very cute with each mommy at the table having a cute little potted flower at their table spot. (Mom, remember you need to keep that alive for me until I can pick it up!) I decided I need to get better at taking photos of the table decorations during holidays because that is a favorite thing for me. In addition, it gives me ideas for holidays I may host down the road!

After lunch, the kids headed outside for the Easter egg hunt. All of the eggs had to be collected before the kids could get their gift from Grandma.

Hans found all of the dark green eggs and had fun finding out what was inside each one!

Here are all of the cousins looking through their goodies!

The Nee kids

Ellen started a little game of Hide-and-Seek...

Cousins/Buddies

And my sisters and I wearing our Peruvian boots. My mom bought these in the town of Cusco in the mountains of Peru and brought them back for us! The guy in Peru custom made these and delivered them to my mom's hotel...pretty cool! We love our new boots!

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter weekend!!!!