This post is one of the main reasons I have been working to catch up on the blog, rather than just skipping what I've missed and moving forward.
EASTER
Brandon and I both grew up with traditional Easter celebrations. Easter eggs (although he never colored Easter eggs, we always did), Easter egg hunts, Easter baskets, Easter bunny, new Sunday clothes, etc. These are traditions that we both wanted to carry into our own family, we loved these traditions and have great memories of carrying them out.
Yet, we also wanted to be sure to create a tradition of appreciation and reverence for the spiritual meaning of Easter. For the record, we both feel this was done in our homes growing up, but we feel that this is a very different world our children are being raised in and the bar must be raised.
So, thanks to a timely post from Powers of Moms (here and here), we came up with some great activities to teach about the Easter week. The week went beautifully and what I loved best was that everything was simple and easy to put together, but felt very meaningful and memorable.
SUNDAY:
I found a template for palm leaves here and we all cut out our own. Anne and Samuel had help, of course. Then, after briefly telling the kids the story of Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem, we watched the LDS bible video of the event and waved our palm fronds. The kids loved it. It is a short video, so they requested to repeat it several times. I obliged. We ended the night with Primary Easter songs.
MONDAY:
I was going to teach the kids about Christ cleansing the temple and we were going to watch the video at home. We were spontaneous instead (doesn't happen in our family very often) and piled everybody in the car, drove to Ogden for William's violin lesson, and then continued on to Brigham City. Dinner was at the lovely Old Grist Mill, pretty much my favorite bakery/cafe in all the world and then we paid a visit to the temple. While there we talked about how beautiful and peaceful it is and discussed how we would feel if we saw people trying to sell things on the grounds. We also talked about standing up for what is right, even if it isn't popular. And took lots of cute pictures, naturally.
The plan was to dye eggs. I can't remember what prevented this from happening. Instead, we watched videos of Christ's ministry through lds.org. Or maybe we did that on Wednesday. However it played out, I know that we didn't dye eggs, but we did watch videos. Maybe we watched videos both nights? I'm okay with that. Traditions are made for the people, not people for the traditions. Haha. I crack myself up.
THURSDAY:
FRIDAY:
Brandon's parents came into town for a quick visit. We spent the day with them, made wonderful memories, and didn't watch the Lamb of God. Brandon and his dad spent some quality time building the new swing set, though.
SATURDAY:
This was the day of the neighborhood Easter egg hunt, something which the kids were so excited about. It reiterated to me that I really hate the "mass rush to grab the most eggs you can find and get the most candy you can find" Easter egg scrambles. The kids still talk about it though, so I guess we'll be doing it again next year. {sigh}
SUNDAY:
Sunday was full of "resurrection rolls", Easter dresses, family Easter egg hunt, traditional dinner of funeral potatoes and ham, pies for dessert, lots of beautiful music and videos about Easter. Oh, and we went to church somewhere in the middle of all of it. It was Sunday that validated all the activities we had done all week. Our kids were both excited about the Easter bunny part and they were eager to discuss the story of the resurrection. It was a perfect mesh of culture and religion, which is what Brandon and I both envisioned.
What I most want to remember about Easter week, was the success that we had as we made an effort to make the holiday intentional and deliberate. The focus was not about making it picture perfect and Pinterest worthy. What I wanted was for my children to be able to learn more about Easter, to connect the joy they feel from the holidays with the Spirit, and to gain testimonies of the resurrection. The week was not perfectly executed,we didn't even get around to dying Easter eggs and we didn't carry through with each activity as I had outlined ahead of time ... and that didn't matter. The meaning and purpose of the week was fulfilled. Because of that, it was a perfect success. And we did finally dye eggs the next day for FHE because, Easter or not, I just love doing it.
2 comments:
Very well done, friend. Thank you for inspiring me - as always.
You are such a great mom Bethany. Your children are lucky to have you and I'm grateful you are writing. :-)
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