Today was such a great day - Matthew got to come home last night!!! The kids and I were all SO excited to see him, these last two weeks have been a really tough adjustment for everyone. It looks like the visits we get with him every two weeks will be from about 8pm on Friday night when we pick him up from the airport to 11am on Sunday morning when we drop him back off again. It's not nearly enough time to spend together, so we definitely plan on making the most of it. We did already have our annual Easter Egg hunt planned for this morning, so we had to share him a little bit. But it was really fun to see all our friends, and the kids were all so cute and excited - it made having to share our time a lot easier!
As usual, we let the little kids get a bit of a head start on the festivities:
And then it was the big kids turn!
There were SO many eggs, the kids had to work harder not to step on any than to actually find them!
Once all the eggs had been found (in record time!) the kids sat down to check out their goodies. We had a lot of the traditional candy filled eggs, but we had also done a bunch of non-candy ones. I picked up a bunch of small trinkets on clearance after Valentines Day to fill eggs with - bubbles, stickers, tattoos, slinkies, and other fun things. The kids seemed really excited about them, which was great!
Everyone all spread out, candy trading going in full force!
Rowan, in her pretty Easter dress:
Rowan and her best buddy Alicia, eating mini Paleo carrot cakes, and conspiring about something:
Two pretty girls!!
Everyone stayed for a couple hours, and we had a lot of fun chatting and hanging out while the kids ran off their candy highs in the yard. I feel really grateful to have such a great group of friends, especially now that Matthew is going to be gone so much and I will need them more than ever. And I was even more grateful to be able to have Matthew HOME with us! We are looking forward to celebrating Easter together, and spending as much time as a family as we can before we have to send him back to Minnesota.
As usual, we let the little kids get a bit of a head start on the festivities:
And then it was the big kids turn!
There were SO many eggs, the kids had to work harder not to step on any than to actually find them!
Once all the eggs had been found (in record time!) the kids sat down to check out their goodies. We had a lot of the traditional candy filled eggs, but we had also done a bunch of non-candy ones. I picked up a bunch of small trinkets on clearance after Valentines Day to fill eggs with - bubbles, stickers, tattoos, slinkies, and other fun things. The kids seemed really excited about them, which was great!
Everyone all spread out, candy trading going in full force!
Rowan, in her pretty Easter dress:
Rowan and her best buddy Alicia, eating mini Paleo carrot cakes, and conspiring about something:
Two pretty girls!!
Everyone stayed for a couple hours, and we had a lot of fun chatting and hanging out while the kids ran off their candy highs in the yard. I feel really grateful to have such a great group of friends, especially now that Matthew is going to be gone so much and I will need them more than ever. And I was even more grateful to be able to have Matthew HOME with us! We are looking forward to celebrating Easter together, and spending as much time as a family as we can before we have to send him back to Minnesota.