Egg-celent Easter Memories

Like all things in 2014, Easter seemed more full this year. 

The weeks prior had been craziness, so the fuss was reduced, BUT traditions are traditions.

 

The littles hung out under stacks of well loved Easter books.  And our newest favorite, gifted to us by the extra special Reno family, The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes, had tears rolling down this momma's cheeks.  Jennifer found just the perfect book to encourage my heart at just this point in time. 

 Resurrection rolls are as important to us now as Easter baskets, so it was fun to watch the bigs teach the littles about our marshmallow Jesus' rolled in our cinnamon sins and left in crescent roll tombs.

 Every time, we are amazed that after a quick baking, our tombs are empty, and yummy too!

 Eli padded down the stairs on Easter AM dressed as a buzzing bumble bee, ready for candy!

  Evie quickly got the jist of the whole basket full of awesome.

 Such a fun morning of snuggling, egg hunting,

 and munching on highly decorative hard boiled eggs and chocolaty bunnies!

 All this at home family fun, combined with a crazy fun Easter festival at church, meant this team soaked up some Easter in a big way. 

Easter

Bunnies, baskets and baking. 

Our Easter was a sweet mix of bunny fun, egg hunting and celebrating the resurrection. 

 

Claire's preschool party was all kinds of cute.  When the big guy himself showed up, Claire was all.over.him.  Giggling the whole time, she rubbed his jacket, gave him a high five, and even gave his bunny tail a squeeze as he left (Oh, yes she did!).   

Back at home, we got crafty coloring eggs, drawing bunnies, making designer eggs, and making sure the place was decorated.  

 
Our favorite traditions though involved watching the Easter story, hiding and talking about our resurrection eggs and baking up some amazing resurrection rolls! The girls know the story so well now and it blesses us in a big way to hear them tell it from their understanding.

An Easter to remember in our new home. 

Eastering

It was an exceptionally sweet Easter this year. 

On Good Friday we had the privilege of participating
in David Platt's Secret Church. 
For 6+ hours we were enthralled with the Word.  It is not to be missed. 

After church Saturday night, we got our crazy on at the Easter festival.  Face and hair paint, jumpers, burgers, dogs, cotton candy, popcorn and snow cones.  Yea, baby. 

The celebration continued at school and home.  Peter Cottontail visited Claire's preschool, and she greeted the big guy with no fear.  At home, we did our resurrection eggs (thanks, Ms. Michele and Ms. Trish!), read books, hid eggs 427 times, made resurrection rolls, squealed at baskets full of chocolate bunnies and other fun things!

Dyeing Time

When our favorite
art spot hosted an egg dyeing event,
we boiled up some eggs, threw on some aprons and got crackin'.

You wouldn't have been able to beat us there. 

Even the Mr. got in on the egg action. 

Art-ing up our egg dyeing experience produced beautiful results. 

With feathers, crayons, stickers, dyes and glitter right at our fingertips, we didn't have to scramble for supplies. 

Our work was egg-ceptional!

After a while, we were all a bit fried, so we put all our eggs in one basket
and headed for pizza.

Happy Easter!

“A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked."  ~Bernard Meltzer

Celebrating Easter with Intention

Easter is such a sweet time with littles.  Store shelves are stocked with chocolate bunnies, egg hunts are at every park, and the promise of a visit from the Easter bunny brings a shiver of excitement. 
Though we LOVE those things
(Come on now, a little chocolate in a basket makes a girl happy.),

we want to be sure that our celebration is intentionally focused on the resurrection story.

Thanks to Pinterest, like-minded bloggers that I follow, and a kindred spirit friend, we are working on purposefully focusing our Easter traditions.  Last week, Angela invited us over to do
Resurrection eggs and rolls. 

To make Resurrection eggs, you fill 6-12 plastic eggs with symbols from the Easter story.  Angela filled six, and included: 1.  crackers: bread from last supper  2.  cross  3.  white cloth: used to wrap Christ's body
4. stone: which covered the tomb  5.  empty egg:  Jesus' conquering death  6.  candy: Jesus being the "sweetest" part of Easter

Our kids went on a hunt looking for eggs 1-6, and then we they all sat down to hear the story.  Our eggs have sense been opened and reopened, and the story retold again and again. 

Our post egg hunt snack was Resurrection rolls.  The kids got to put "Jesus" a marshmallow (covered in butter, cinnamon and sugar) into a crescent roll "tomb".  After they were baked, the big surprise was that Jesus was gone and the tomb was empty.  The marshmallows had melted and the kids were thrilled!  This yummy treat has sense been requested 47 times, so we'll be trying this at home this weekend.

 

May the ceremonies of our homes

be true ceremony~

from Him,

because of Him,

pointing toward Him,
honoring Him,

thanking Him. 

Treasuring God in Our Traditions by Noel Piper

A Hunting We Will Go

We've been Eastering this week! 

We've had Easter egg hunts at school, church and at a playdate.
After seeing these adorable treats, we made our own for friends!

Each month an incredibly kind and crafty woman at our church does an art morning.  The littles sing, make a craft and a special snack and listen to Bible stories. 

Check out the special snack this month!  These were gobbled up in minutes.  (Ears first in case you wondered.) 

After munching and crafting, we headed out for a little hunting! 
(eggs and wild flowers)

Claire was pumped about finding eggs.  She actually looked at the camera to show them off!  #happymommarazzi

The sweetest thing about the morning was that the littles were sharing eggs with each other, happily filling each other's baskets.  Also to our surprise, when they found all the eggs that they wanted, they stopped hunting.  Eggs were left in full view!  Us mommas giggled, and probably each said silent prayers that our kiddos could stay this age forever!

Sophie's school teachers made this little fella for the kids to hunt eggs at school.  Cute-ness overload. 

Team kudos to Ms. Luanne at church and Ms. Holly and Ms. Laurie at school for making Easter such a sweet mix of Jesus, bunnies and eggs.