I enjoy Easter. For some reason it is easier for me to focus on the real meaning of Easter than it is to focus on the real meaning of Christmas. Perhaps it is because the world around us isn’t quite so crazy about Easter stuff. I’m not sure. This year Easter wasn’t nearly as celebrated as we often do. With Kevin and I leaving town for three days right before and me down with a stomach bug two days before that and the boys down with the same bug over the course of the two weeks before that … I just didn’t have the time or energy for Easter that I sometimes do. We tried though.
We made an Easter craft … lots of glue and string to make these eggs!
We built Jerusalem … see the temple in the back with its spire?
We found a toy to represent Jesus and his donkey …
And we waved leaves and shouted hooray as “Jesus” made his triumphal entry in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday …
We had money changers and corrupt people in the temple waiting for Jesus to come and cast them out …
Watch Ricky doing a great job playing Jesus HERE. (Our Jesus didn’t cleanse the temple with a whip – he used a turkey.)
We waited for everyone to wake up on Easter morning before looking for our Easter baskets …
The boys rummaged through their goods and enjoyed some candy before breakfast …
And how I laughed … Rusty opened one plastic egg and the m&ms inside jumped out like one of those snakes-in-a-can gags. He was smiling, but so startled that he shook and giggled as he picked up the candy (a horrible picture missing his face, but a wonderful memory) …
The boys had colored some eggs with Grandmama while Kevin and I were gone and the Easter Bunny hid those Sunday morning along with their baskets. The boys found four dozen eggs incredibly fast …
Billy was particularly proud when he found the egg with his name on it …
Some new clothes for church …
And an egg hunt with the cousins at Grandmama’s house …
After the real egg hunt, I dumped out the box of empty eggs just to let the kids have the fun of finding even more – not hidden, not filled, just eggs lying in the grass. They didn’t seem to mind …
They didn’t seem to mind until Tommy started opening every egg before putting it into his bag. When he found the egg empty, he’d just dump it on the ground and pick up another egg. Stinker!
It was a bit more casual of an Easter than we often have, but it was a good one. As we sat around Easter morning and talked about the end of Christ’s last week, I was impressed with how well the boys remembered the story. Not only remembered, but knew that all of that suffering was because He loves them. It was one of those happy mom moments …