Smile...It's Easter!!!

I love Easter. I love it for so many reasons.  Mostly because we get to celebrate the resurrection of our Savior.  Mostly because so many hearts and minds are drawn to the life of the Jesus Christ.  It was good to talk about the real meaning of easter with my kids, especially the boys.  After we watched a video recounting the last days of Christ's life, and I explained to them that Christ suffered for all of our sins, and also felt all of our pain and sadness, Carver said to me, " Mom, that makes me feel really sad he had to suffer for things I did wrong".  I explained to him that what he did in that Garden was the greatest gift he could give us.  Because he DID suffer for our sins, and felt our pains and infirmities, we can live with him one day, and while we are here on earth, he can comfort us and "make our burdens light".  What a gift.  As the boys watched as Christ was nailed to the cross, they kept saying, "Why would they do that to him"?  It is unimaginable, yet it was all for us.  I am so thankful for my Savior, and thankful that my children can understand what a beautiful time Easter is.  I am so thankful that the Jesus Christ is the foundation of our teachings as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  I am so thankful that I can teach my children that the Savior knows each of them personally. 


One of our Easter traditions is EASTER PICTURES.  I know...big surprise.  It really just amounts to me sending them to the front porch minutes before we leave for church so I can get a few photos.  This is the last year that I will have all four of my kids posing for me on Easter :(   We had a fun easter egg hunt in the back yard, had a great time coloring eggs, and had a nice family Easter dinner.  It was a great day all around. 

We love to see the temple

The temple is a very important part of our lives. As Mormons (Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints), we attend weekly church services at a chapel, but we can also attend THE TEMPLE as often as we like, to worship, make covenants, and serve others.  It is also the place where we believe we can be sealed together as couples in marriage. It is a special and sacred and we have to live certain standards to enter.  There have been times in my life when it was more difficult to make it to the temple more than once a month, which was fine and still a wonderful blessing.  This year I have made a goal to go to the temple as often as possible and I have been able to go weekly for the most part. It has been the biggest blessing in my life.  I have felt so much peace there. I have had inspiration and received answers to prayers. I have had a greater desire to return.  I have found that my heart is turned to others more when I am attending often. Children cannot attend the temple until they are of a certain age,  (the girls are able to do certain ordainances a couple times a year) but we want all of them to feel the spirit of the temple and spend time on the grounds. We want them to know that this is a place where they can come for peace. A place where they can be married one day. Gods house on the earth. The House of the Lord.  There are LDS temples all over the world now, 136 to be exact, and I feel so blessed to have a temple so close to us. So this particular day a few months back, after church, we decide to drive over to the temple and walk around for a while and let the children feel the special spirit on the grounds.  I love to see their faces turned up looking at this beautiful building. I love to know that their own testimonies of Jesus Christ are forming, or in the girls case, are already strong. I remember all of my tiny children singing the song "I love to see the temple, I'm going there someday. To feel the holy spirit, to listen and to pray. For the temple is a house of God, a place of love and beauty.  I'll prepare myself while I am young, this is my sacred duty". 

Football obsessed

It was flag football season in January and February here in Florida.  Carver LOVES this time of year.  Carver LOVES football.  Carver is a little bit obsessed.   Espn obsessed. Sports center obsessed.  And mostly...obsessed with being outside PLAYING his favorite game.  He and John have LONG conversations about teams and plays and players and EVERYTHING football. They watched so many games together.  They discuss plays together.  They play in the back yard together (All the while...Cooper tagging along and sucking up so much information).  We all went to highschool football together.  It has been fun.  But Carver about died when the highschool, college and NFL seasons of football were over, so this Flag football season saved him.  Extended the Football Mania for a while. We loved going to his games and practices and we had fun watching him.  He had a great team, and excellent coach, and I love how much these kids are learning...in a safe environment (before they need to get their heads torn off in tackle football...who knows when we will let him do that).  And in flag football, you have to be on your toes.  It takes more than brute force to pull those flags, and still keep up with all the complicated plays and such.  You have to have some serious precision and a little strategy.  I think it will make them all better tackle football players in the years to come.

Obviously I have no video skills, but at least I caught a little of Carver in action when he was playing quarterback one game.  Good job Carv.

Carver going for it after an interception

He runs...he grabs the flag... mission accomplished.  (Even though mom didn't catch the whole thing on camera)

Picnic and a little baseball

A few weeks back our church had a ward party one Saturday morning.  It was a simple thing, but turned out to be so fun, which is always true for those kinds of things. This fun picnic at Fort Christmas park turned into a little baseball game with the boys.  I was chatting with my friends and I just looked over and saw John out there with a gaggle of 9 and 10 year old boys. Simple thing, but watching these little boys (half of them I had just seen hours before playing their football games that morning at a different park) play this simple "American passtime", just made me have a little "awwhh" moment.  Our ward is very spread out, and we don't all live in the same neighborhood at all, but it was fun to have this sense of community today.  Seeing my hubby play with his boys is always something I love, and I love it that he got those boys all playing.  And of course, 5 year old Coop was out there with all of them holding his own, demanding to learn how to pitch, hit, and run, and he kept up with all of them.  Soon more ward members joined, and even Kinsey and her friends played. Beautiful day, great food, football games, picnic, baseball games, time with my family.  Just a good memory. 

Cooper has never played organized baseball, except with us in the yard, but with one simple lesson, he was hitting the big boy pitches and holding his own. 

Kinsey and Savannah Sardon and her mom Lisa, and I, toured the cute old houses at Fort Christmas after the baseball game.  I love " old stuff " and the history of it, and we loved trying to imagine what their pioneer lives must have been like. 

Gotta love smores and a campfire

We sure love our lives in Florida, and who knows if we will live here forever, so I am really wanting to document some of our simple happy moments here. Especially how much we enjoy our friends, and how much we enjoy our wonderful mild winters. We had a great campfire last month with the Dowdy's in their yard. When I say yard...I mean very large piece of beautiful land. I had been doing a photo shoot on their property (which was a perfect spot), and when I finished, my family showed up and we spent the February evening with good friends, around a campfire, eating smores and setting of some fireworks.  Only in Florida.  Awww. 

"Mason, stop looking like a zombie. Are you alive?"

Here are a few of the shots I took earlier that evening in the Dowdy's beautiful yard.  A lovely maternity shoot. More on my photography blog www.amylopezphotography.blogspot.com. Thanks Stef and Chris for the use of your yard.