As I was having my quiet time yesterday I was struck again with how undeserving I am of God's grace. Christ died for me when I was the worst of sinners. I'm ashamed to admit that sometimes I can talk myself into believing that I am a little bit deserving of Christ dying for my sins. I have to continually come back to the truth that I could not be more undeserving. I'm thankful that God showed me this area of sin in my life so that I could humbly give him the praise and glory he deserves on this Easter day. Praise Him!
We've had a wonderful Easter! The day started out a little hectic. Earlier in the week I had picked out my outfit and Emily's outfit and had them laid out. This morning I changed my mind about both. I picked out a different outfit for Emily's about 30 minutes before the church service started and I changed my mind about my outfit about 20 minutes before the service started (my outfit change meant that I had to pull out the iron). Bert could not have been more patient. I told him as we got into the car that I will have to do better next Easter! We only ended up being about 2 minutes late to church, which is actually really good for us on a normal day.:)
Emily woke up fever free this morning, but she had been running a low grade fever for the last couple days so we couldn't put her in the nursery. We brought her in the service with us. She really enjoyed the singing! She bounced and danced to every song. After the sermon started she started "talking" to us. We were in the back and she wasn't being that loud, but I just had to take her out. I didn't want her to distract anyone. We stood in the back for awhile, I let her crawl/walk around in the lobby, and we walked outside for a few minutes. At first I was disappointed that I wasn't going to get to hear the sermon on Easter of all days, but then a sweet thankfulness came over me. I was filled with thankfulness for what Christ had done for me on the cross and I was filled with thankfulness for my healthy, sweet baby girl. Here are a few pictures that I took while we were hanging out.
After church I had to get at least one family Easter picture.
Our small group got together for lunch and an easter egg hunt at Carolyn's house. Emily was the only child so she got special accommodations for the hunt. Carolyn hid her eggs in a separate area so that some of the competitive guys in our group would let her find some.:)
Alison and Kayla were the 1st and 2nd place winners. I know you're jealous of their prizes.
Bert, Emily and I all came back and took a Sunday afternoon nap (Glorious!) and then got ready to go out and enjoy the beautiful weather. We first went to a park next to the seminary. Emily is loving to swing these days!!
Katherine and Brett came to Wake Forest this afternoon to do a few errands and they stopped by the park to hang out for a few minutes!
Emily also has a new found love for slides. Right now we either have to slide with her or hold her as she slides. She smiles and laughs the whole way down.
We had a wonderful time at the park and then we took a walk down Main Street (my favorite place to walk). As we were returning to our car after our walk, an ambulance, fire truck and several other vehicles pulled up as one of the kids on the play ground had gotten hurt. We didn't seem to be needed so we were trying to get out of the way quickly. After we got home I started looking for our camera and realized that it had probably fallen out of the stroller when we were packing it up to come home. I started feeding Emily her dinner and Bert jumped in the car to drive back to the park and look for the camera. It couldn't have been more than one minute after I had been praying that we would be able to find our camera that I got a loud knock on our door. I got up to answer it and there were 3 firemen at the door...one of them was holding my camera!!! He asked if it was mine. I'm sure my mouth was hanging open as I was trying to figure out how they knew where we lived. They had done a little investigative work and recognized our apartments from the family Easter picture we had taken earlier today (picture above). So they drove over here, looked for the Honda CRV that they could see in the picture, and then got out and asked one of our neighbors if they knew which apartment we were in! I was in shock that they would take the time to figure out where we lived and return the camera. I thanked them about a million times and then called Bert to tell him to turn around. (He had seen the fire truck pull in as he was pulling out of the apartment complex.) After he got home I baked the firemen some brownies, wrote them a thank you note and then the three of us headed up to the Wake Forest fire department to tell them how much we appreciate all that they do for our community. We really are so thankful.
It's been a busy but wonderful Easter! He is risen! He is risen, indeed!
