Happy Keister!
I just love this picture, it always makes me smile! I hope that you and yours had a nice Easter weekend. We had a lovely Easter weekend. The weather was wonderful. We got up early on Saturday and hit a couple of Easter Egg Hunts. These are so much more fun with Blake than they were with Matt. Matt was always a bit shy about them and would invariably come back in tears with an empty basket. After a few years, we decided it was too traumatic for him, so we stopped taking him. Blake on the other hand, isn't a bit shy and just piles right in there with the other kids. He's kind-hearted though and will usually share a few of his eggs if he sees a kid who didn't get any.
These pictures were from our church Easter Egg Hunt. The Easter bunny is actually our good friend Bill Cooper that Blake has known literally all his life. He's kind of like a 2nd Grandpa to most of the kids and especially to Blake, so he just walks right up, says "Hi Bill" and plops down in his lap for a picture. What a character! 
Bill is going to be his honorary Grandpa next month when they have Grandparent's Day at school. When you have a limited selection of family members like we do, it's comforting that you have good friends like this you can call on to fill in the gaps. He was also Matt's confirmation partner and mentor, so they've probably spent more time with Bill than either of their actual grandfathers. They say friends are the family you choose yourself and we really believe that.
After that, it was so pretty out, we decided (well, OK I decided) that we needed to do something outdoors for a change. It's been a long hard winter and it's a treat just to be outside. We haven't been to the Zoo in ages, probably a couple of years, so we decided to plan a spur-of-the-moment visit to the Zoo. Matt had to work all day, so it was just Tony, Blake and I. The weather was a bit nippier than we had thought (a smidge over 40 degrees), so we were glad we had some warm jackets, but it was actually very nice. 
Utah's Hogle Zoo is definitely a small town zoo. They typically only have one or two of each animal and it used to be kind of depressing because some of the animals used to be in cement cages with plain wire mesh and nothing much to entertain them. Also a lot of the animals have died of various causes over the years, which always causes an uproar (very punny, huh?). But the last few years, they've been making a lot of improvements. They've put in a new elephant and rhino enclosure, made a wonderful new area for the large cats that is a whole lot nicer for them, and they're working on a new carousel with all sorts of unique animals. So it made for a much nicer visit this time. 
We stayed until our feet got tired and we started getting chilled, then we headed for home and had a nice dinner of some beef stew we'd put in the crock pot and watched a movie. I played in my stamp room for a bit - made some more of Diane's One Sheet Wonder cards to replenish my stock of pre-mades, and then I shooed the boys off to bed so the "Easter Bunny" could get to work.
Some years, I've really gone all out on Easter and ended up spending a fortune on new outfits, candy they don't eat, and all sorts of doo-dahs that they don't really care about, so this year I decided to take it easy on myself. We colored some eggs, got a couple of bags of candy, some peeps and a couple of chocolate bunnies and that was about it. Then I had Matt pick me up some gift cards - one for I-tunes for him and one for Burger King for Blake and voila! A very nice simple Easter for less than half the price and they were just as pleased.
We got up, hunted some eggs, found their goodies, and had a little "war" with the chocolate candies. I'll tell you, these kids are SO bizarre. They'd much rather pelt each other with the little chocolate eggs than eat them! Then we had some orange rolls, our favorite Easter breakfast and off to church we went. Had some Honeybaked Ham (yum!) for lunch and dinner and managed to sneak in a viewing of Horton Hears a Who in the afternoon. All in all, a very nice day!
PS: We did have a bit of sadness during our day today. One of our nice ladies from church has been battling lung cancer for a couple of years. She had her lung removed and several rounds of treatment so we thought she was on the mend, but we heard today that she is going in for another round of radiation for tumors in her brain. Poor thing! She and her husband are just the nicest people and they have two young sons about 6 & 8 or so. It's been a rough couple of years for them and it looks like they still have a rough road ahead.
We also had a bit of drama in the parking lot. A close friend of ours was going out to the car with her family and either had a seizure and fell, or fell and hit her head and it caused a seizure. Either way, it caused a tremendous blow to her head and she had to be taken off in an ambulance. What a scary business for us and her family. Matt has some first aid training from school, so he took off running to try and help, but they had things pretty well under control, so all we could do was watch and try to keep her comfortable until the ambulance got there. We are sure hoping that she won't have any lasting effects from this. She's another young mother with kids Blake's age, so this could really cause some complications in her life if she is having a seizure disorder or something like that.
I hope you will be kind enough to keep these fine women in your prayers. I know we will be keeping them in ours.
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