Easter 2016

Easter 2016

This year, Easter kind of snuck up on me. I’d spent all of March studying the Atonement and trying to figure out how to teach my Sunday school lesson on Easter Sunday, but hadn’t given hardly any thought (other than to purchase a ham) to celebrating Easter with our family. Literally, the day before Easter Noel and I talked about what we wanted to do. We decided we wanted to try splitting up the secular celebration of Easter (gifts and egg hunt) from the spiritual celebrations, which meant we would be doing our egg hunt that day. We swung by Target to pick up Easter shoes and buckets (deftly dodging the Zombie parents pushing around carts full of candy) and then mixed up some homemade egg dye at home.

Kids checking our the eggs.
Kids checking our the eggs.
Kids dying our eggs.
Kids dying our eggs.

While the kids watched a movie, Noel and I stuffed a few plastic eggs with candy family members had sent and some homemade peanut butter eggs.

The day before our "spring" egg hunt.
The day before our “spring” egg hunt.

Since the ground was still covered in snow, we hid the eggs inside, which allowed for a certain level of creativity.

Egg in a dump truck.
Egg in a dump truck.
A sweet ride for an egg.
A sweet ride for an egg.

The kids had a lot of fun finding the eggs and opening the gifts in their buckets (warm weather pajamas, Annie’s bunny crackers, and some things from their grandparents).

Cooper finding an egg in Olaf.
Cooper finding an egg in Olaf.
Easter buckets.
Easter buckets.

Then on Sunday we tried to focus on the spiritual aspects of Easter. Noel sang a beautiful rendition of “This is the Christ” in a double quartet and my Sunday School lesson was at the very least, meaningful to me. I of course didn’t take any pictures of anybody in their Easter clothes since we rushed out the door to get to church and people were already starting to undress by the time we made it back home. Plus, picture taking has never been my strong suit.

Our Easter dinner.
Our Easter dinner.

After a fancy dinner of ham, potatoes, croissants, and asparagus, we had a little lesson about Easter (aided by this lesson from Behold Your Little Ones and our church’s Bible Videos). The kids really impressed us with how much they were able to tell us about Christ’s death and resurrection.

Little Almond Cake.
Little Almond Cake.

We finished off the day with a little almond cream cake. At this point, Ellen realized we were winding down and started to whine about how we hadn’t done Easter yet. I asked her what Easter was about and she said, “Jesus.” We repeated the conversation a couple of times before she exasperatedly said, “Mom, but we haven’t found eggs!” When I reminded her we’d done our egg hunt the day before she was a little disappointed, but didn’t put up too much more of a fight. I really liked putting the egg hunt on a completely different day and will probably do it again in the future; the kids will get used to it eventually.

2 thoughts on “Easter 2016

  1. My mom started the tradition of doing a “spring egg hunt” after Easter when all the stuff was on clearance. Keeps the focus on Christ for Easter and saves money. Win-win

  2. Good job. I’m sure your kids will adjust. And it spreads out the celebration! We did the Saturday egg hunt a few years ago, and it worked well. I keep meaning to do it again, too, but haven’t planned well to make that happen. However, also due to lack of planning, we dyed eggs the day after Easter, and it worked fine (we hid only plastic eggs in our egg hunt the previous day).

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