Easter

Growing up, the Easter tradition in my family was to hollow out eggs by poking a hole in the top and the bottom of an egg and blowing out the insides. Then we decorated them, strung a pipe cleaner through them, and hung them on a branch that was brought in from outside and had been spray painted white. I wanted to carry on this tradition with my own children, but also decided to do a few things differently. We still do the eggs the same way, but each year we go out and pick a branch that has started to blossom with little green buds and use that as our tree. This year, I think we may have picked the branch a little too early (2 weeks before Easter) because by the time Easter morning rolled around our eggs were hanging on a withering branch with brown leaves. Note to self: pick branch on the 9th day before Easter. The other change I made, was to incorporate the Easter Story scripture passages into our egg tree tradition. Each day we remove a slip of paper from one of the plastic eggs numbered 1-8 hanging on the tree and read the chapter of the Bible as indicated on the paper. This really helped Mikie understand the true meaning and miracle of Easter. I'm disappointed that I didn't even get a picture of our egg tree this year or very many good ones of the boys dying their eggs. I guess this was because I did this activity while Michael was on a trip and I had to juggle taking pictures, all the while trying to keep my boys from dying the surrounding area with brightly colored water. Thanks to a box of egg wrappers we had a sports themed tree this year. The boys even used a white crayon to make their own divots on an egg and dyed it, turning it into a golf ball.

We were invited to a friend's house for an egg hunt as well as games, crafts, and Easter themed food. Zachary had to find all the yellow eggs with blue dots and Mikie had to find eggs with numbers 1-11. I thought Mikie might try to find them in numerical order, but he didn't. He just picked up whichever one he needed next and kept track of it all in his head (even though Bridgette had given them a cross off sheet).

I made an altered version of Italian Easter bread. It called for aniseed and chopped candied fruit. Instead, I substituted cranberries and almonds. It took three tries for me to make this. I used the other two messed up batches to create bread bunnies for the kids. And even then, it turned out very dry tasting and the eggs weren't fully cooked hard all the way through. But hey, it looks pretty, right?

EASTER MORNING

I forgot to take pictures of the boys' Easter baskets before they dug into them so here are the contents spread out.

Every year the boys get a new lamb in their baskets to remind them that Jesus is the Lamb of God. I knew Zach would love his because he still carries around the one he got last year. You can see that this was his favorite Easter gift (it even ranked higher than monster trucks!) When I attended Family Bible Church in Whidbey, a group of moms talked about their tradition of making "resurrection baskets" for their children. The idea is that everything in the basket represented the story of Easter or the life of Jesus in some way. Since then, I've tried to make our Easter baskets as relative to the holiday as I possibly could while still getting them the things I know they will enjoy. Here's a video telling about each symbol:

After breakfast was over and they were dressed in their Easter outfits, it was time for the egg hunt. I was expecting the worst...you know...pushing, shoving, scrambling, fussing, crying, and screaming; but, what I got was my very own Easter miracle. Mikie is of course faster at finding eggs but when he saw that Zachary didn't have as much in his basket he poured some into his brothers' willingly. And in the video below you'll see some scrambling and snatching going on, but again Mikie helped Zachary find a few eggs:

It's a great day when you can eat candy before 9:00 a.m. Video below:



Of course, Boagie and Grandpa sent Easter gifts too. Video:

After church, we drove up to Annapolis and had Easter dinner with Michael's family.

Mikie hasn't quite figured out how to properly climb Aunt June's trees.

Zachary stopped to smell the flowers.

I wonder how many more Easters I will spend looking longingly at all the little girl's in their frilly Easter dresses before I finally get to dress someone other than myself in a skirt?

Jesus said, "This is what is written: the Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem." Luke 24: 46-47