a meaningful hunt.

It is now a tradition to use Resurrection Eggs  to help Natallie understand Easter was not about bunnies that lay chocolate eggs but about a Savior that loves her more than she could ever know. Last year we kinda skipped Easter because we were throwing up in Cancun. Anyways, two years ago we did "the hunt" and both kids were so excited about doing it again this year...

We opened one egg every evening after supper.  Inside was an object that was part of the Easter story like silver coins that represented Judas betraying Jesus for 30 silver coins.

Natallie knew today was Easter and she burst into our room at 7:00 am, turned on all the lights and yelled, "its Easter! it's Easter!" 
Hallelujah, He is Risen so I guess I need to get out bed now too.

They hunted for eggs in our brand new faux grass front lawn.

Then we opened up the eggs to find the letters inside each egg and matched each colored letter to the color-coded paper to spell the 'secret message': JESUS IS ALIVE!

Celebrate! Hallelujah! He is Risen! Christ is Risen indeed!

I hope we can keep doing this every year until the kids think its stupid to look for eggs in the front yard. It's so much fun to look back at see how much they have grown and how much we are blessed.

Happy Easter!

Suprising Auntie Rainbee.

My sister and I are less than 2 years apart and from what we remember of our childhood, we really enjoyed being sisters. There was the time I accidently rocked her too hard on a teeter totter boat which landed her in the hospital but other than that our childhood was all happy memories or at least we forgot all the bad stuff. I remember playing house (the baby was always named Angelica), taking every kind of extracurricular activity today (you name it, we did it...even Circus camp...we seriously learned to ride unicycles together), complaining about Chinese school, and watching every episode of Full House together. We loved the Olsen twins, I remember wishing we were twins and we'd dress up alike and pretend to be twins sometimes.

It was so nice always having my sister to do new things with and always having a friend. I remember one time, we went to sleep away camp for the first time and we got so homesick, we tried to sleep on the same bunk together but our wicked camp counsellor told us we weren't allowed and we would break the bed (seriously? how much can two tiny Asian girls weigh?) I remember having to retreat back to the top bunk with Rainbow on the lower bunk and we tried to hold hands through the night.

Anyways, anyone who knows my sister knows she is awesome. She is now affectionately referred to as Auntie Rainbee to the kids and we decided to throw a surprise birthday party for her.

We got balloons and re-used Noah's "Happy Birthday" banner from his minion-themed birthday and the kids were so excited. She wasn't supposed to come to 5:45pm and I really shouldn't of told the kids to be on the look-out at 4:00pm because they just sat by the window anxiously waiting and by the time it was 5:45pm they had left their lookout duties but we managed to pull it off and all yell SUPRISE!

Oh and the cake! What a disaster! I was in such a frenzied state trying to get everything ready before she got there that I dropped the cake and the 5-second-rule-it's-still-good rule did not apply. It was not all good, it was all smushed on one side and the once legible "Happy Birthday Rainbow" in pink icing now said "Haonkalfdaosfhadshfn,jnayagfbjksdafbjkd"  I tried to fix it.  I put that plastic Happy Birthday in. This is what it looked like after I tried to improve it..  #FAIL

 Then Simon - who the kids refer to as The Fixer Upper was able to work his magic and made the cake look like this! I am so impressed. I married this man for a lot of reasons but I didn't know that fixing smushed cakes that neurotic wife had dropped on the floor was one of them! #WIN

I wasn't even going to tell Rainbow that I had dropped it but Simon deserved credit for his miracle work so I told her and then I showed her the picture of "nailed-it" fix job. That made everyone laugh. Glad I am good for at least that!

Happy birthday Auntie Rainbee! Thanks for being a great sister and a even better auntie.