Happy Easter 2009

We love Easter. For obvious reasons...we love Easter. What can be a more beautiful and tragic event in all of history. For God to come down in humbled form. To come, for the sole purpose of glorifying Himself, His justice and His grace all wrapped up in the event of the cross. Simply mindboggling. Getting to share this story brings us all much joy. Here are some other (albeit, a little more trivial) things we've gotten to do;


We made paper flowers:



Here's our final display:



We dyed eggs, let them dry and then added some marbling. We took tissue paper and put it inside a bowl. Then the kids took a spray bottle to dampen the tissue paper and rolled the egg around in it. It added a cool marble to our eggs. And it was also much easier for little hands to do by themselves. I'll probably just do it that way next year and skip the cup dye.



We had a big party last year with lots of kids, candy, crafts, and an egg hunt. As we were processing Easter this year, all our kids kept talking about was "when is the egg hunt???" I mean, asking until it hurt. So we decided to forsake the egg hunt. We are just really serious about not letting secular traditions trump Jesus. We told our kids it's like them having a birthday and instead, we celebrate Dora the Explorer instead of them. They wouldn't want someone else celebrated when it was "THEIR" day. They got that and seem to get our concern. So the whole weekend has been about Jesus-as it should be.



Here's my handsome little buddy.



Then we peeled the eggs and used the egg shells to make beautiful crosses.




This is a neighbor who is also an art teacher. We spied her this morning painting some of the gifts of spring. She's actually painting the side of our building enthroned in white blossoms. It's beautiful. We've been checking in on her progress all day.


An update from art lady friend: my kids are now being allowed to use her brushes to paint the grass and trees bright orange. Sometimes I have to remind our friends that you CAN tell kids no.



During our family worship time, we reenacted the crucifixion and resurrection using homemade play-dough and figurines. We had teddy bears, rubber duckies and pirates all watching the crucifixion. Then today Jesus (played by a pirate) rose from the dead and the kids had to find him in the house. We wanted them to understand the experience the disciples were having at the time of Jesus' death and resurrection.



It was a wonderful weekend filled with sweet worship. Thank you Jesus!