Egg Hunts and More!

I am a tad bit late posting photos from our Eggs hunts. Sophie participated in five egg hunts and Emma-Caroline participated in four. We have candy eggs galore! And that sneaky Mr. Easter Bunny stopped by last night with more candy for my girls Easter baskets! It seems there was a good sale on candy at the Fresh Market and he just couldn't resist restocking the candy supply at the Avery House! This first week of the Easter season (and yes, Easter continues for 50 days after Easter day until Pentecost) has been full of some weariness from our Easter day joyfulness, but mostly lots of happiness and fun filled days with Sophie being on Spring Break. I will only be sharing our Easter Egg hunt photos as somehow in all the merriment of Sophie's spring break, I did not take a single photo. Happy Weekend!

Neighborhood Egg hunt, one of many!

Our neighborhood friends, Harlan, Sophie, Emma-Caroline, Ruby, and Parkey

The photos below were taken by Vaiden on Easter Day.

Silly little friends! I love Katie's face!

This is my favorite shot that Vaiden took!

Look at Davis! Such a dapper little man in his seersucker!

The hunt is on!

In the photo below, the girls smiled much bigger for Miss Vaiden than me!

Easter 2012

We celebrated Easter this year with a wonderful service at our church followed by brunch and an egg hunt with the Taylor's. The weather was perfect with a sunny 72 degrees and a light breeze. The day could not have been any more perfect to celebrate the risen Christ. We hope that all of our family and friends had a wonderful Easter too. More photos from our Easter weekend to come!

The Dogwood

The dogwood trees in East Tennessee have bloomed. The flowers have had their peak and now have almost faded completely away. On this Good Friday, however, the blossom of the dogwood will forever remind me of the passion, crucifixion and death of Jesus, our Lord and Savior, for our sins so that we may one day have eternal life with him in heaven.

 While I was away two weeks ago at the spiritual retreat Cursillo, I was blessed with the opportunity to photograph many beautiful dogwood blossoms at their peak. On this holy day of remembering Christ's death on the cross, I leave you with these images from my time at Cursillo.

  I also share "The Legend of the Dogwood." May God's peace be with you all.

Legend of the Dogwood

"At the time of Crucifixion the dogwood had been the size of the oak and other forest trees. So firm and strong was the tree that it was chosen as the timber for the cross. To be used thus for such a cruel purpose greatly distressed the tree, and Jesus nailed upon it, sensed this. In His gentle pity for all sorrow and suffering Jesus said to the tree: " Because of your regret and pity for My suffering, never again shall the dogwood tree grow large enough to be used as a cross. Henceforth it shall be slender and bent and twisted and its blossoms shall be in the form of a cross--two long and two short petals. And in the center of the outer edge of each petal there will be nail prints, brown with rust and stained with red, and in the center of the flower will be a crown of thorns, and all who see it will remember."

Practice Egg Hunt!

Yesterday we had an impromptu Egg Hunt over at a friend's house with some very dear little friends, Mary Caroline, Elizabeth, Sophie and Fielding. Fielding hid our eggs for us and was a wonderful sport in helping the girls find their eggs. The girls had the best time running around the yard on their practice egg hunt. Later we went for ice cream at Brewsters. As Lucy said, "This is the best day ever! I get to have a play date with my friends and go on an egg hunt!" It doesn't get any better than that for sure!

Silly Faces!

Emma-Caroline and Lucy

The hunt is on!

Following the leader.

Counting up the found eggs.

Sweet friends!

Hoppy Saturday!

I have this thing about going to the mall every Easter as well as Christmas and having the girls photos taken with the very same Bunny or Santa depending on the season. I buy the package of photos and every year, at the appropriate season, I pull out all of those photos and set them up for us all to look at and remember how much we liked or didn't like Mr. Bunny at the time. It's a nice way of chronicling my girls' growth and actually something that I look forward to each year as the seasons approach

 This morning we added a little something to our traditional visit to the mall Easter Bunny;  a stop at Bravo Italian restaurant to have breakfast with Mr. Bunny's Brother, Butterscotch. Our Mall Mr. Bunny is Peter Cottontail and is quite the busy fellow, so his brother Butterscotch happily obliged us with a fantastic breakfast.

 We then headed over to the mall for our traditional photo op with Mr. Cottontail. The girls love to see their fuzzy little, or not so little, friend. We are now ready to hunt eggs next Saturday when all of the Easter egg hunts begin!

Hope everyone has a very Hoppy Easter!