Celebrating Easter 2012

 I feel as though we've had a lot happening the past three weeks!  

I haven't been as organized as I'd like to be in planning family activities to draw attention to the week leading into Easter, but we did manage a few crafts and activities to help the kids understand and celebrate Christ's death and resurrection!

For Palm Sunday, the kids and I colored some pictures of Jesus' triumphal entry, and then we traced our hands on different colors of green paper, glued them to a popsicle stick and used stickers to spell Hosanna.  Then we found some great songs, both new and old, on YouTube and Vimeo to dance to and sing Hosanna!

Our Palm Sunday palm

Then we spent some time decorating hard-boiled eggs.  

I thought it would be fun to try this idea for Volcano Eggs, but it was a bit of a bust.  

The kids enjoyed it, but the eggs turned out quite pale, and the fizzing of the reaction between the vinegar and baking soda was anti-climactic.  Jeremy did try reducing the amount of water in the dye & baking soda paste, which resulted in a more vibrant color, but it was more difficult to paint with...  

 We had a family dinner at my parent's on Friday... and then again on Monday!  

On Friday Grandpa had hidden some eggs around the first couple of rows 

of trees at the tree farm, and the kids had fun trying to find them.  

I admit, I did raid their candies and ate all the chocolate and almond eggs (super yum!).

On Sunday, Jer and I hid some eggs for the kids to find.  They weren't filled with chocolate.  Instead we used this Easter Egg Hunt idea that has a printable coloring book to go along with the eggs that the kids find.  I loved how it talks about Jesus from Christmas all the way through his life to Easter.  It was a great way to talk with our kids about the importance of Easter and why we celebrate it the way we do.  Aria has been busting out some really thought-provoking questions lately about God, and I have to remind myself that she's only looking for a simple answer, cuz she's only five!  Well, almost six.  While we were driving home during spring break she asked how we know that God is real (because kids at school were saying that He's not).  Its really neat to see the wheels turning in her head and heart as she is owning her faith!

Good Friday Fun, Easter 2012

Ahh!  Its Easter already!  The past couple weeks I've been so busy thinking about planning Aria's birthday party, that Easter has snuck up on me, and I really wanted to make the most of this incredible holiday we celebrate to help my kids understand what Jesus has done for us through his death and resurrection!

So, tomorrow, being Good Friday, we're going for a little walk with the young adults from our church in the morning to a hill that overlooks the city.  We're planning on spending some time worshiping and praying for the city there.

Source: breadbaking.about.com via Carmen Kinniburgh on Pinterest

Then, I was thinking it might be fun to try making some hot cross buns this year (I'm not a bake your own bread kind of gal, unless using the bread machine counts!).  So, I've got my recipe written out, and I think we'll work on that when we get back from the hike.  Oh!  I could make the dough before we leave, and then it could rise for two hours while we're out!  Brilliant.

And we'll do some egg-dying too.  I boiled the eggs tonight so they're all ready for tomorrow!

Source: modernhostess.net via Carmen Kinniburgh on Pinterest

I thought these look like fun, but I don't know that I really love the idea of dying the actual egg I'm eating, or having peeled eggs hanging out in my fridge until we get around to eating them!  So we'll probably do the marble swirled eggs that we did two years ago.

And then we'll head to my parents for a family dinner!  I'm looking forward to a family day, where we can talk about Jesus' love for us, and his perfect love sacrifice that he made so that we could experience freedom and joy and forgiveness!

Happy Good Friday!