Happy Easter!

Its hard to believe that Easter has come and gone already!  Was it earlier than usual this year?  I'm afraid I was a bit unprepared and uncreative this year with our Easter preparations but it was still a really lovely and special time with family and friends.
I'm finding that having the girls adds so much more joy and excitement to things.  I read, "The Amazing Journey - Jesus, Creation, Death and Life", by Susie Poole to the girls on Good Friday and was reminded of how amazing God's gift of new life is in Jesus.
It was lovely to have Jeff home for the four day weekend.  Both the girls love him so much and have so much fun with him!  On Saturday we had hopes of catching a country train to a historical town called, "Ballarat".  We live about 2 minutes away from the train station and so we see and hear trains every day.  Evie has been asking me for quite a while if we can ride on the train so we thought this would be the perfect opportunity.  Well, it turned out that all the trains to Ballarat were cancelled for the next week so we settled for driving there instead.
Ballarat is a beautiful old town that was settled in the mid 1800's at the time of the goldrush.  It has a lot of big old buildings and a lot of history.  Since we couldn't ride the train, we settled for a tram ride around the lake.

We also took the girls to a large playground.  Its nice now that Hayley is able to walk and play on a lot of the play equipment.  I'm pretty sure she thinks that she is about four or five years old because I kept finding her playing with the bigger kids on the higher parts of the playground.  I often call her, "Jeffrey Junior" because she is so adventurous and shows very little caution!

On Easter Sunday, we drove down to my parents' house in Ferntree Gully.  Their back yard was perfect for an Easter egg hunt for the girls.  We all had so much fun watching their excitement and helping them find the eggs.

                                    

          

                      

Hayley had her first taste of chocolate and loved it!

                       

On Easter Monday we headed down to one of our favourite places, Geelong, which is right on the beach.  Evie got to have her first carousel ride.  

               

And according to Jeff that was his 16th carousel ride!  Evie named her horse, "Giddy-Up Hat".

We finished up the day with ice-cream and a walk along the beach.

Hoping that you had a lovely Easter!