Twice a year our church holds General Conference, which is when the prophet and other leaders speak to the entire world.  You can watch it at the church building or at home online (www.lds.org/conference/languages). This year the dates for General Conference just happened to be on Easter weekend (not typical), so we did not have regular church services that day. General Conference on Sunday goes from 12-2 and then from 4-6, so we got together with some friends and arranged for a 10:00 Easter brunch and egg hunt. It was a ton of fun, and we hope to make it a tradition!

In order to avoid the inevitable grass stains on Brendan and mud-caked knees on Hadley, I arranged for a photo as soon as we arrived.

This was not easy...

Here are some cute egg-hunt pictures. Brendan was not much into it this time. Perhaps that was due to the fact that it was about our fifth one.

Mom!  Give me some privacy here!

Hey, sweetheart. Would you like to have my purple egg?

Brendan decided that the playset was more fun than hunting eggs, so he handed over his basket pretty early in the game.

It was soooo fun to watch Hadley with the eggs! Well, actual egg - singular. He played with the same one the entire day.

Hey, Matthew! Does that one have chocolate? 

Yes... Hadley did get an egg open, and he had chocolate all over his face and in his mouth before anyone saw it. Whoops.  Second-child syndrome.

Watch out for the sharks!

The playset was the ship and the grass was the ocean. They were having a blast. Oh to be a kid again...

Check out this picture. I am holding onto Hadley with one hand while eating with the other. Mike is desperately trying to get Matthew to take a nap by bouncing him, and Megan (Matthew's mom) looks like she might just fall asleep. Awww... parenthood.

The ladies

Brendan looks like he just had an expresso, and Hadley a sleeping pill.

To Hadley's defense, it was an hour past his bedtime when we put him in Easter clothes.  Dan took the boys to the mall while I headed to an appointment.  He called within minutes to tell me that the Easter Bunny had just gone on his dinner break, and they would have to wait at least another thirty minutes. Ugh. Poor guy.  Easter was the next day, though, so we were out of time.  It was now or never. Next year I will act earlier.

Right after the Easter Bunny's visit

Brendan in disguise

Unpacking the fun

A box... yum!

What else is in Brendan's basket?

Huh, a tag! I wonder if I could eat this...

For the first time ever, Brendan actually made a request for a present without any kind of prompting from us. About a week before Easter, he told me he wanted the Easter Bunny to bring him a Zhu Zhu pet.  Knowing that Hadley would want whatever Brendan wanted, we asked the Easter Bunny to bring two.  Luckily, he did.  Brendan was soooo excited and still plays with them every day.

Waiting in line for the pony rides, we decided to snap a picture of Mom and Brendan.

Before the ride began, he was all smiles.  He was sooooo excited to be on a real-life pony (first time ever!)!

Especially during the "snow storm" of flower petals (very cool)!

But when I tried to let go for a moment so Dan could get a picture of just Brendan while riding, Brendan was not so happy.

Next, he went on a train ride with Dad throughout the church parking lot.

Weeee!

Hadley enjoyed just watching the show.

This was right after Brendan had poked Hadley in the eye. Hadley has a "Don't think you can just kiss up to me now, " look on his face.

Next, Brendan picked out a spider for his airbrush tattoo -- not exactly in line with the Easter theme, but he loved it.  He told me it was a scary spider and kept trying to chase me all over the parking lot telling me that the spider was after me.  Nice.

Then we were off to the inflatables. Both boys loved it, and we stayed here longer than anywhere else.

Lastly, we hit up the Easter egg hunt. We were excited for this "grand finale", so we were a bit disappointed when they told us that due to unexpected numbers this year, only a few of the eggs actually had candy in them, and the kids were limited to five eggs each.  We were happy that there was such a great community turn out, but Brendan was a bit sad about the lack of candy in the eggs.  Hadley, on the other hand, did not mind one bit. He just ate the plastic eggs.

Does this one have candy in it (shake, shake)?

No. :-(

Five eggs, no candy, and yet still TONS of fun!

I have been slow in posting Easter pictures because during the Easter weekend I took over 350 pictures... I'm not sure how that happened, but it has taken me awhile to pick out the best ones to post. Considering the original number, perhaps the amount of pictures I am about to share will not seem too terribly ridiculous. However, I suppose that anyone who reads this blog is already accustomed to my long posts filled primarily with pictures.

Our first egg hunt was with a church play group.  Brendan and Hadley both enjoyed filling up their baskets!

I got one, Mom!

Here's another!

What? Only 12 eggs each?  That's no fun.

Hadley's FIRST Easter egg!

Brendan has more eggs than me. Maybe I could just take a few...

Mom and the boys