Holy Week

This year spring seems reluctant. It's still cold and chilly in our area. But that matches nicely with the late Easter date. Our family has been working on getting ready for Easter.

Aaron and I have been reading the book "God So Loved the World." It does a good job collecting and organizing all of the various scriptural stories of the time and giving additional background and information on different Christian traditions. I feel like it's given me a better understanding of what happened as well as a few ideas on how I want to observe and celebrate the day.

So we've started early and have been trying our hand at Easter fun.

We've needed the extra warm up time. I am pretty slack about holidays. I don't decorate. I hate crafts - I feel like they're generally wasteful of my time and resources. I don't like singing. I'm not very musical. And I REFUSE on moral grounds to decorate cakes. See above feelings on crafts then multiply by ten.

So we've been working on coming up with our own traditions that don't involve too much singing, crafting or cake decorating.

First thing. I participated in cousin Kari's 4th Annual Easter Basket Swap which is loads of fun. If you missed it this year you MUST try it out next year.

Then the Easter bunny helped me out by visiting a couple times this week and hiding easter eggs in our yard. So while I got our garden turned over and our peas planted, Reuben and Miriam hunted around the grass for easter eggs. The easter bunny considerately kept the eggs contents restricted to cereal. Easter Day when the cereal contents magically change to candy, those kids are going to be over joyed.

We picked up some Easter books at our library and have been reading them. Petook. What is Easter? My First Easter etc. Here both kids are looking at our library book haul. Those two are buddies.

Reuben Miriam and I dyed some Easter eggs. We tried hard to make them look good but when Aaron discovered the remains of our first attempt it grossed him out so much he threw up. It's been two days and he says he still can't think about eating eggs without gagging. So I'll spare you the pictures. (See the dangers of treading towards craft land? I justified this as Not a craft because it used vinegar and dyes which is Chemistry)

I've been gathering up some fun stuff for Reuben and Miriam's easter basket. Thank you Etsy.

When Reuben was Miriam's age he had some colored wood eggs and he played with them for FOREVER. We lost two in moves. But the last remaining egg is still a favorite with both the kids. They make great toys.

Tomorrow we are going to do a little Family Home Evening lesson where I hide eater eggs which each have a symbol of Christ and the resurrection - white linen, a rock, wood for the cross, bread. We'll open them together and talk about the story.

And my big and best idea: Friday, which happens to be Earth Day (hooray!!), we are going lights out. As soon as Aaron gets home from work we are going to power down - no lights, no tv, no computer, no phones, nothing will be on. We are powering off. The darkness will remind us of Christ's death and I hope give us some undistracted family time to reflect on the sacred time. Everything will stay off til Sunday morning.

Kind of crazy but I'm looking forward to it.

Anybody else have any good Easter traditions?