Easter

As mentioned for a few years, in 2020 I felt prompted to really focus our family on Christ for Easter, even as much, or more than Christmas.  Then last year (after Easter) Elder Stevenson invited the church to do the same thing.  It was a great opportunity to look at his suggestions and make a few adjustments.  It is hard.  I want to write him a letter and say, "if you want us (and by "us", lets be honest, it is the mothers who do holidays) to do this, then you need to move conference".  I can not prepare my children for conference AND Easter the way that I want to unless they are at LEAST 3 weeks apart.  2 could be a bit doable.  Luckily they were one week apart with conference after Easter (always preferable).  So with CFM, Easter, and Conference it was full.  Luckily CFM is BoM this year or we would have that on our list also. My children all the testimonies and love the church and don't complain about spiritual things, and it was too much for THEM.  Basically what I am trying to say is that last year I said I wanted to do more with the Book of Mormon and I didn't and I am trying to justify why.  haha

Here is my wall of our family and friends who have died, who we wait for, in grateful anticipation, to be called to come forth.  Because of Jesus Christ these pictures and memories are not sad.  It is exciting to think about seeing them, hugging them, hearing their laugh, seeing their smile.  They all live.  They are their same person, same personality, same work, just in a different room. 

A few other decorations.

I did make a Book of Mormon display

I was SO GLAD to use Maddie's art!

I would love to do something to our house or yard, but I can't think of anything that wouldn't be overly weird or sacrilegious.  

Dane and Eve loved Easter and loved playing with all the stuff.

I made a list of the things I wanted to do the week leading up to Easter.  There were about 12 things I wanted to do.  I knew I couldn't do them all.  I also didn't want to follow Holy Week exactly, so I just decided to do my own thing, follow the spirit, Gauge my own emotional energy and my family's tolerance level.   If it felt like I night I could do something, I would, and if it didn't I wouldn't (no guilt) and after Easter I would feel good about what I DID and not what I DIDN'T do.

I was really happy with Palm Sunday.  We had never celebrated Palm Sunday before.  So it was a nice treat/surprise on Sunday morning.  They woke up to this table set up and brunch.  We didn't do anything else in the morning, just this, with Easter Hymns playing in the back ground.  We had family council why they ate brunch.

Eve and Dane really loved playing with the Palms.

At night, before bed, we made our own "Palms".  I gave a little lesson, we watched some video's of Palm Sunday (to get a visual) and then cut out our hands from green paper and wrote these goals on the fingers of how to welcome Jesus into parts of our hearts and lives, and then we attached them to sticks.  I didn't get a picture.  I was pleased with how well everyone did it, most without complaining, a few with out eye rolls, and one got really into it.

THEN we acted it out.  Elder Stevenson gave me the idea when he talked about acting out the nativity.  I had plans to act out every part of Holy Week. but honestly, I forgot.  So I am glad I at least did one.  If you can't tell by the smile on Dane's face, the babies LOVED it.

Again, I was so so overwhelmed with gratitude for how happily the bigger kids participated.  They are such good sports.

I added our hand palms to my display of fig, olive, and Palm branches and made a table set up that stayed all week.

For the first time we also celebrated the last supper.  We did not do a traditional Passover, but I made some of the Passover food.  For the first time I made lamb.

We ate on the floor and I tried to make it fancy.

I made unlearned bread with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, parsley for bitter herbs, salt water to dip them in, figs, pomegranates, and horse radish.

And for Noah I put out a jar that had some blood from the lamb

The boys had work and couldn't join us.

Among all the spirituality I knew I needed to take a lesson from Christmas and have some fun things planned in, but I wanted them to be meaningful.  So I took the phrase "last supper" and applied it to them, what THEY would want to eat if it were their last day on earth... their favorite treat.  I got their favorite candy and wrapped them up.  I gave a lesson about how God will always give us good gifts.

And then we did our "because of Him" activity that we have done for a few years.

On the Saturday before Easter, or "Easter Eve" as I now call it Dane, Eve, and I went to the ward Easter Egg hunt.  Earlier in the day we went on a family hike (see previous post).  So I just took Dane and Eve to the egg hunt.  It was sad for me, it was the first time that none of the big kids came to the egg hunt.  I didn't expect them to hunt for eggs, but I thought they would want to hide them or socialize.  Thankfully, Madison filled the eggs for me during nap time.

Dane was a little disappointed that the eggs were just laying on the grass and he didn't have to find them.

For Easter Eve dinner I made a traditional (Mormon) Easter dinner.  Ham and funeral potatoes.  I made some breaded shrimp so Jason would have something he liked.

Then I took a big risk with and Easter Eve devotional.  It had the potential for awesomeness or failure.  There was fire and candles and reverence and singing.  Fire aside it could have come off as "forced spirituality" and everyone could have just made fun of each other and rolled their eyes at the whole thing.  But, fortunately, my kids are great and it was wonderful.  I turned off all the lights and talked about darkness, despair, fear, and hopelessness.  I talked about how Jesus died.  But then, Mary saw Him.  I lit the middle candle.  And then I talked about faith, hope, light and sharing that light.  Like mary we have to spread the light.  Then we went around and each person lit their candle and picked their favorite "Jesus song" and we sang it.  

We ended up getting a lot more lessons out of it than we thought.  Some peoples candles kept going out and they needed to be re lit a lot.  Some had naturally bright and big flames, others had really small, dull flames.  They were all the same candles, from the same package.  All were lit by the main candle in the same way.  

After bed time the Easter Bunny came.  Brock was out late with friends and found the Easter Bunny still working so he stayed up and helped him hide some eggs.  

The candy is hidden:

I asked all the teenagers to pick out an inspiring picture and I had it framed for them.

I set a pretty table for brunch the next morning.  You can't see it, but there are clear plates, cups, and utincils.

On Easter morning they gathered in our room and Jason read the account of Christ appearing to the Nephites from Third Nephi.

Then there was some explaining of rules.  You may have noticed one tradition missing.  I TOTALLY forgot to have us dye eggs.  I bought the eggs and the dye kit, but just spaced it.  Thankfully grandma Hanna came to the rescue.  She sent an Easter package with plastic eggs and had names written on them for each kid.  So they needed to find their own eggs.  So I had to explain a few things like that.

The hunt was on.  Despite me explaining that all the eggs down low were for Dane and Eve, Megan was a little over zealous.  

She found her basket and just sat there and ate it.  She wasn't much into the hunt.  Dane however, was really into it this year. 

After the hunt we had brunch and went to church.  

We ended our night with dinner. The kind Jesus would cook (wink).  Fish and honey comb.  And of course we read the story about the fish and honey comb and tried to gleaned the lessons therein.