Easter Weekend

I decided to try something different for Easter this year.  In the past, Easter would officially start Saturday morning with an Easter egg hunt, then we would leave our baskets out and then the Easter bunny would come Saturday night.  Sunday morning would be chaos as the kids woke up and looked for Easter baskets and jelly beans and then were told to hold everything and get breakfast, get ready for church, and out the door.  Or even harder, if it was fast Sunday... try telling a group of small children not to eat touch any candy until our fast is broken later in the day.  THEN while we were at church, our focus would be on how soon we could get home to play with our toys and eat our candy.

This year, I really wanted to teach the kids the meaning of Easter.  We decided to break our Easter into two celebrations, a celebration of the coming of Spring, and a celebration for Jesus Christ, the atonement, and the resurrection.  Our Easter spring celebration started Friday.  The kids were on Spring Break, so Zac took half a day off of work and took us to see "Hop" and took us "bowlin' ball" (Ian's term for Bowling).  Then we went home, got our Easter baskets out, made some cookies together, and watched a Veggie Tales Easter movie before going to bed.  Tanner and Ashlyn slept together and could not fall asleep in anticipation of the Easter bunny.  When the Easter bunny came, he hid every jelly bean and hundreds of other little candies in every concievable hiding place at our house. 

 You can see jelly beans and candy in every nook and cranny on the couches, tables, door knobs, door hinges, blinds, light switches, and many more perfect hiding places.

 Here is Ian finding a stash on the lamp!

 And Tanner, cleaning off the light switches...

 And Ashlyn with a big stash in between the stair rails!

 Next the Bunny hid a single Easter egg that held a clue that kicked off a scavenger hunt to find the Easter baskets, which just so happened to be in the bathtub!

After a couple of lazy hours in our pajammas enjoying our treats and toys, we headed to an Easter egg hunt at a local park.  And for that one miraculous morning the weather was actually good!  A first in Easter egg hunt history!  Then we spent the rest of our day playing at the park and enjoying our new Spring toys... which wrapped up our Spring celebration.

Saturday night, I read from the Children's Bible stories about the last week of Christ's life.  We had a family meeting and discussed ways we could each make our Easter Sunday more meaningful.  We decided as a family to:

-turn off the TV all day

-listen to good music

-think about Christ during the sacrament

-say a special personal prayer of gratitude towards Christ

and -watch the Lamb of God video as a family

 In the morning for breakfast, we made Resurrection Rolls, it was a recipe given to me by my mother-in-law and so perfect to teach the children about the resurrection.  (If you want the recipe, check out http://www.chewandchew.blogspot.com/.)

 This is Charlotte on Easter morning checking out her Easter basket from the previous day.

 The dress she is wearing is a dress that my niece Courtney wore to our wedding!

 Enjoying some candy.

Ashlyn in her Sunday best showing off her Easter basket.

We seriously had the best and most special Easter ever!  I will definately be celebrating Easter this way again next year.