Our Easter

How was your Easter? Hope it was wonderful. I had a really lovely weekend.

Saturday night my mom and sister and I dyed Easter eggs- normally Dad is in charge of this, but he's still in CA. Mom and I had to figure out how to do the dye!

We did our traditional eggs dyed with onion skins- they turned out dark and lovely this year!

Usually we're a little more creative with the colored eggs and use crayons and stuff but they still turned out well.  

Here's my three- I had fun layering dyes (I love color theory!)

Lime green= green and then yellow

Purple= pink and then green and then blue

Aqua=yellow and then green and then blue

The gray eggs in the basket were boiled in pickled beet juice, which turned the eggsells grayish (made me think of the goose eggs we used to get when I was a kid!) and they are pink inside!

And the pink goes all the way through!

Mom hid the eggs in the house and my sister and I found them. I love being a big kid!

I somehow had the urge to make a cake this weekend too. 

And like all good Easter eggs, it's chocolate inside. ;)

Church today was very nice. I am our branch chorister, so it was fun to pick out some lovely Easter hymns to sing. We had a lot of people attend today- 43 is pretty good for our little branch! It was so nice to have people visit, and some of my favorite little kids showed up today and it made me very happy. We had some nice talks and the Spirit was strong. I wound up drawing an olive tree on the blackboard for the Sunday School teacher- nice to know my years of art school were good for something! I had a nice YW lesson with my girl about the priesthood.

After we got home, we had our egg hunt and munched some eggs (after playing "points and butts"!) and chocolate (the Easter bunny was good to me and brought me several Cadbury eggs!) and I got a nice nap. We had a roast with potatoes, onions and carrots, it cracked me up to be eating bunny food today! I heard that my mom's cousin is also keeping the "points and butts" tradition alive with his little kids, that's great. Did some research with Mom and found out that that game came from my great great grandparents who were German Swiss. Fierce Easter egg competition is in our genes!

The only thing that would have made today better would be for my Dad to be with us.  I miss him. He sent me a really funny Easter card, it was very sweet of him to do since I know he's very busy. This Easter has had more meaning for me, what with my grandmothers and all. I'm so thankful for the gift of our Savior and what he did for us. He lives, and because He love, I can live in love with my family. Death has no sting.

"Our Savior lived again. The most glorious, comforting, and reassuring of all events of human history had taken place—the victory over death. The pain and agony of Gethsemane and Calvary had been wiped away. The salvation of mankind had been secured. The Fall of Adam had been reclaimed. The empty tomb that first Easter morning was the answer to Job’s question, 'If a man die, shall he live again?' To all within the sound of my voice, I declare, If a man die, he shall live again. We know, for we have the light of revealed truth."

—President Thomas S. Monson

Happy Easter. 

Youth Conference

A few days after I got home from CA it was time to get packed up again and head on up to Palmyra for Youth Conference! It was pretty funny having to unpack just to repack again. Theoretically I wouldn't have had any YW at this- Youth Conference is typically for those 14 and up and I don't have any girls that fall in that age range- but this conference was for all youth because it was taking place in Palmyra and the youth had the opportunity to do baptisms. 

So I had y 12 yr old YW with me and we survived the 3 and a half hour trip up! Friday night started with games for the Under 14 crowd and a dance for those 14+. Yep, life's not fair sometimes, I know those younger kids would have much rather been at the dance than playing silly get to know you games. I can't blame them! So there was a bit of refereeing involved to make sure that kids weren't where they didn't belong.

My YW wasn't interested in what was going on in the gym, and when we went outside for her to get a book she was admiring the beautiful lit up Palmyra temple down the street. We decided to drive over and see it all lit up for ourselves- why not?

We walked around the temple and enjoyed it's beauty- I've never taken photos of it at night and I usually don't see it like this. 

The windows were lit up and glowing so beautiful. My YW really enjoyed the experience and so did I. Temples are beautiful sacred places. Later that evening we had a Q&A session with the Palmyra Temple President (they asked good questions- phew!) and we figured out rides for the next day. Late night by the time that all of that happened- none of us females got to the hotel and to sleep til 12:30 am at the earliest!

The next day, breakfast started at the crack of dawn- 6:30 to be exact! Yeah, basically no sleep that night! We had breakfast and went to our designated areas, I believe we were split in 3 groups to do the tours and baptisms. Our group started off at the Joseph Smith farm. It was cold out and we got snowed on, but it was neat to see the farm and the Sacred Grove in a beautiful dusting of snow. 

Thankfully it warmed up a bit when we headed into the Sacred Grove- if you don't like the weather out here, just wait 5 minutes!

Here you can see the Smith farm barn:

From there we went to the temple- my girl got to do baptisms inside for the first time and it was so neat. She was so excited. I handed out towels. It was so great to see the youth perform these ordinances. 

From there it was our group's turn to go see the Grandin Press, where the Book of Mormon was first published. I've been there a couple of times now, and it still amazes me all the things that "just happened" so that the Book of Mormon could get published (wink wink) and all the work that was involved in making the books. 

I tried to show some different photos than I have in the past of this place- this marked the first time I photographed the Grandin Press with my DSLR so it was nice to get some better photos in the dim light. 

What it might have looked like where the plates were buried:

Our Sr missionary tourguide- she was great and I loved her skirt!

Inside the room where the pages were sewn together:

We ended our trip with a drive up the Hill Cumorah and a quick look at the church bookstore. Fun stuff!

Well it was a good weekend for my YW and a good one for me as well! 

It was very spiritual and very memorable for the both of us. 

We had a very large turnout of youth for this conference, it was great!