Thank Goodness for April Fools!

About 2 weeks ago I started thinking that it sure would be great if Easter Sunday fell on the same Sunday as conference. Not because I didn't want to attend church on Easter Sunday, but because it would be so convenient to have the Easter Bunny deliver baskets of snacks and activities to keep the little ones busy during conference. I was discussing the idea with Brad and he suggested that we have the Easter Bunny come a week early and tell the kids that he had played an April Fool's Day trick on them and had come early. I liked the idea as soon as I heard it. So Saturday morning as the kids were out back pulling weeds with Brad, the Easter Bunny hopped on in and left baskets full to the brim for Sadie, Drew, and Brinlee. Cole got his own little haul of biter biscuits(this kid has been teething forever!), a new taggy toy and some eggs to shake. Brad was well taken care of too and the bunny was kind enough to leave me some movie tickets so I can finally see Hunger Games. The kids were so excited when I called them in from weeding to tell them a special visitor had just stopped by. When they saw the baskets they were a bit confused. I told them the Easter Bunny had wanted me to pass on his little April Fool's joke and told them I would be happy to hold on to their baskets for another week if they wanted to wait for acutal Easter. The answer was a big fat NO as they were dumping out their baskets. Conference started a few minutes later and their stashes kept them entertained through both sessions on Saturday and 1.75 sessions on Sunday. By the last 1/4 of the afternoon Sunday session the novelty had pretty much worn off. All in all it proved to be a great kill 2 birds with 1 stone idea - a success in my book. I do have to thank this wacky April Fool's holdiay for one more little thing. My parents are in England visiting my sister for the next couple of weeks. My sister and her husband took a little trip to Italy over the weekend and my parents stayed back to take care of her kiddos. A couple of weeks ago my sister called to tell me she was pregnant and told me under no circumstances was I to tell my mom the news. She wanted to wait to tell my mom when she got to England. So I was e-mailing back and forth with my mom over the weekend and found it odd that she hadn't mentioned my sister's pregnancy. I finally decided to ask if my sister had given her any "news" before she left on her trip. The response from my mom made it clear that my sister had not yet spilled the beans. Oh no! How was I going to cover this without giving away the secret. April Fool's Day to the rescue- that's how. I quickly e-mailed back that there really was no news and I was just playing a joke on her in honor of April 1st. I breathed a big sigh of relief after receiving an e-mail back to confirm that she had bought my story. Anyway, here a few pics from our early Easter conference weekend.