Easter season with four kids is always a fun, festive, and very active time of year. It is extremely easy for us to get carried away in egg hunts, chocolate candy, and the Easter bunny and forget the true reason for Easter. In fact, between school, Sunday School, and other events, the kids have already participated in four egg hunts prior to today's! In our house, we try to balance the fun, spring-time themed activities of the Easter season with the awesome true reason for the celebration: the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
During the week before Easter, Danny read the death and resurrection story from a different gospel every night to the kids. On Monday, he read Matthew, Tuesday he read Mark, and so on. Danny and I were amazed at how the kids, especially our 8 and 6 year olds were able to soak up the details. These readings prompted deep conversations. Consequently, these conversations led to rich prayer time. And this prayer time lead to a more harmonious home life. On Friday evening, after Good Friday service at church, we watched the Gospel of John, a movie that accurately follows the exact retelling of Jesus' life from his beloved disciple, John. I must say, due to this deep Bible time as a family and our Good Friday service at church, I experienced the most meaningful Easter of my life! The word of God is powerful!!
Along with our Bible time, we also had fun with the more traditional Easter activities. What a blessed time!
I knew we'd have to boil a whole lot of eggs for five kiddos to each have enough to dye. And this year, I finally figured out how to boil eggs, then give the eggs an immediate ice bath after boiling so that the shells peel off easily. So awesome!!
After the eggs, we made Resurrection Rolls. I found this recipe on Pinterest, and it totally works! Basically, a marshmallow acts as Jesus' body, which you wrap in crescent dough (the tomb), then you bake it and ta-da...once baked, the marshmallow disappears! This is such a great illustration for the little ones on how after three days, the tomb was empty.
Then we made little Easter Bird Nests out of chow mein noodles and malted eggs. This is a super fun,project that the kids really enjoyed.
Super cute, right?! And so delicious!! Who knew that chow mein noodles and melted marshmallows were a match made in heaven?
The cooking continued with a carrot cake, lemon bars, a chocolate fudge pie...and this delicious clean breakfast berry strata recipe from Tosca Reno's Clean Eating Cookbook. We baked it on Easter morning, and enjoyed a healthy breakfast before the rich lunch that was in our near future!
And...here we are! Easter 2013! Gracie and James are 4 1/2, Clara is 6 (turning 7 next month) and Emma is 8. Danny and I are....thrilled that everyone is smiling and equally overjoyed that James still has his shirt tucked in.
Church was wonderful. We tried out a church today where we don't normally attend. The honest truth is that it takes a fair amount of time to curl my mane, and the girls all wanted their hair styled too, so we didn't have time to drive all the way to our church by the time we'd finished! So, we were excited to see cousin Ellie at her church! I helped my sister out with the 3 and 4 year old class, and the girls attended kids' church. What a great morning!
After church, we drove over to Grandma Donna's house, where we....
dyed Easter eggs! Wow. The kids did a fabulous job, and only four eggs were dropped...that's a new Walker record!
I always have to take a super close up picture of me and my amazing sister. Ayron made the most outrageously delicious cornbread casserole to accompany my dad's chile beans that I have ever had. She is the casserole queen, and I am the dessert diva. I just made that up. What I wish I had is a picture of our Sequence game that we played after lunch...actually, no, a video would be better, so all the world could see all the hilarity that comes out of my sister's mouth!!
This is my second most favorite picture of the day. My mother-in-law, Susie, and my own mom, Donna, who believe it or not, did not call eachother to coordinate those outfits, are such wonderful, amazing, loving women. I am so blessed to have these two placed in such important roles in my life!
And now to my favorite picture of the day...
Danny is showing his mom how to take pictures on her phone. Love this. For too many reasons to explain.
Here's a sweet picture of my little Clara posing proudly next to our delicious works of art.
Oh my.
And now for the egg hunt.
I LOVE Emma's face in this picture. I had let the 4 year olds go 30 seconds early to give them a headstart, so while the big kids were standing and waiting, their little eyes were scanning the area for the closest eggs. Emma clearly has her sights set on an egg.
Gracie found a nice basketful of eggs, but the big egg hunt winner of the day was most definitely...
James. By the end of the hunt, his basket was overflowing. He was very proud!
Love these sweet kiddos!! Their mouths are open because Ayron had them say, "Jesus is alive!!" Try it, you'll see.
Now to check out the loot.
I told you! He was one happy little egg hunter!
Ayron came up with a great egg hunt idea this year. Instead of candy in the eggs, which we are trying to avoid, she put buttons inside her plastic eggs. At the end of the hunt, the kids tallied up all of their buttons and picked a prize based on the number of buttons they had. Genius!
Truly, this is my favorite picture from the Easter 2013. All of my loves, packed onto a bench. What a joy it is to spend the day with family and loved ones, and all with the knowledge of the love of God which is so deep and incredible. God is preparing a place for me and someday, God willing, I will look upon Jesus' beautiful face.
I experienced something awesome this morning, and I decided I must share. Through Facebook this morning, I stumbled upon a simple, yet strong and convicting Easter sermon from 1970 by Billy Graham. Danny and I could not stop watching it. We actually moved my laptop into another room, away from the noisy kids, to listen to his words. Standing in the rain in a football stadium, Billy Graham preached about the love of God for the sinner. He described Jesus' pain and suffering as he was nailed to the cross, and then went into some detail concerning the two thieves on either side of Jesus. He made such a beautiful point about the thief who believed that Jesus was the Messiah. All the thief said to Jesus was, "Remember me when you come into your kingdom." He didn't even ask outright to be saved. He didn't confess his sins. He wasn't baptized. He just asked Jesus to remember him. And Jesus said He would see him that day in paradise. As Billy Graham described this most briefest of conversions to take place in the Bible, I felt the tears coming. What an awesome and loving God I serve. I am guilty of so many sins, sins that I repeat, sins that I want out of my life, sins of weakness and pride and selfishness and jealousy. I thank God for His infinite mercy, because watching and listening to what Christ did on that day is sometimes too humbling to bear. Happy Easter everyone! Love and blessings to you and yours!!
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