We took the entire week to celebrate Easter this year, and it was wonderful. With this week being Spring Break, and the kids not having to do any school work, and with not being able to travel due to Coronavirus, we had all the time in the world to celebrate Easter. I really felt that this was the first year that we had an equal balance between the secular celebration of Easter with bunnies and eggs and fun and the spiritual celebration of Easter with focusing on Jesus Christ, his Holy Week, and his atonement.
Some of the fun things we did with the kids for Easter this week was making cookies and decorating them, dying Easter eggs, and an Easter egg hunt. We started the week by dying eggs. Kevin found this neat foam egg kit that the kids had a blast with. Big Sis made the foam using the powder from the egg kit then adding drops of liquid dye to the foam. The kids then took turns dipping eggs in the foam. It covered the eggs with colourful foam that would sit on the eggs for 5 minutes, then we would wash off the foam and the colors would remain. We learned very quickly not to roll the eggs in the foam, because it would leave it all brown and not so pretty. We also had to wear gloves when dipping the eggs, I'm not sure if it was for safety reasons or if it was so our fingers didn't get dyed also.
While the older girls were having dipping fun, Kevin and I helped the younger two with the traditional egg dying kits. Little A was being super creative this year and was trying to get her eggs three to four colors. She would put an egg halfway in one color, then put it down about 1/4 of an inch more to create two different shades. She would flip the egg and do the same thing in another color. Monster just wanted all his eggs some shade of green. He absolutely loves the color green and would just keep tossing eggs in the green egg dye container. Kevin helped him, so would didn't get all green eggs.
Kevin and I were able to enjoy the fun of egg dying too this year. We had a few of those plastic shrink wrappers, and so I grabbed the hair dryer and put the decorative shrink wrap on a few of the eggs.
All of our cute little egg artists were super proud of their creative egg art. They all were trying to claim their eggs and said no one could eat them. I vetoed that and said eggs are for eating, and we will take a picture so they can enjoy the eggs forever, but you are allowed to call only one egg that is yours to eat, but the rest are free rein for all to eat. Luckily they all thought that was fair.
After the morning activities of dying eggs, we ate lunch then started on our afternoon activity of making cookies. I didn't really care about the mess, I just wanted the kids to have something to do all together, so they all actually helped me make the cookies. There was flour all over the kitchen flour and counters. There was also sugar that fell on the floor, and I'll tell you what, that is the worst! It was horrible to walk on sugar and have it all stuck on my feet, so gritty and gross. Once the dough was all made and the kitchen all destroyed, the kids sat at the kitchen table and each had a quarter of the dough to roll out and cut as they seem fit. For the most part, most of the kids used Easter or spring cookie cutters. We had bunnies, eggs, flowers and butterfly cookie cutters. M&M got super creative and used a knife to cut out some designs and her initials. Monster used a knife, but his was just slicing the dough so he could attempt to secretly eat it. It took the rest of the afternoon to cut out and bake the cookies. We decided we would save decorating the cookies for another day.
Monster kept the sprinkles and pretty much used them all on his six cookies. He would do a big blob of color than just pour the sprinkles on top. The other kids took their time and came up with some super looking cookies. It was an afternoon well spent. Of course, the best part about frosting cookies, is eating them! The second we were done frosting, the kids all grabbed their biggest and most frosted cookie to shove in their faces. So. Delicious!
In addition to eggs and cookies, we spent a large portion of the week focusing on the Holy Week. We took the time each day to read individually in the Bible, then come together and talk about the last week of Christ's life. I originally got this idea from Mercy River, you can find her post here. I love her approach and how she makes the entire week focused on Christ and how she makes it child friendly. The kids look forward to our Holy Week devotionals every night. Each day after our devotional and discussion, we would watch the video associated with the day and make a small craft to add to our Holy Week Wall. This has become one of my most favorite Easter Week traditions.
This year, we tried something new for Passover Thursday. We decided to really get in the spirit of passover and have a Passover dinner. We couldn't find any flatbread or pita bread, so we sliced bread super thin, had grapes and cheese, grape juice, olives, eggs and chicken. I know technically the chicken should have been fish, but my kids aren't big fish lovers, so we did the best we could. The kids really enjoyed our dinner and we really got into the spirit of the true meaning of Easter. Passover Thursday is the hardest day to teach for the Holy Week. This is the day that Jesus Christ suffered in the Garden of Gethsemane. His greatest sacrifice happened on this day, the greatest pain and the greatest expression of love, was his suffering in the garden. I am so grateful for my Savior and his sacrifice so I can return to him. It was a special evening filled with the Spirit as we taught the kids about Passover Thursday and all that happened this day in the life of Jesus Christ. I gained a deeper appreciation for Jesus Christ during this week and I am so grateful for this opportunity to learn more about Him this week.
On Easter Sunday morning, we decided to hide the Easter baskets this year. Kevin and I had a fun time hiding all the baskets. We hid Big Sis and M&M's baskets in harder places than the two littles. It was so fun walking behind them and watching them all searching for their baskets. Monster found his basket behind a couch cushion, Little A found her basket in our pan drawer inside one of our big pans. M&M found her basket underneath all the shoes in the shoe basket. She had a really hard time finding her basket and needed a little hint. Big Sis took forever to find her basket and also needed a hint. Her basket was hid under the sweaters on the coat/sweater hooks.
After an adventurous morning of finding easter baskets, We had a super special and spiritual Home Church. We focused on the true meaning of Easter and really enjoyed sharing our thought on the Savior and what we all learned this week about his final sacrifice. After church, the kids asked if we could do an Easter egg hunt in our amazing backyard. Last night, Kevin and I filled and counted all the eggs. I counted six piles with 10 eggs each. After the eggs were all hidden, I told all the kids there was 10 eggs outside for each of them, and once they found 10 eggs, then let the rest of the kids find all their 10 eggs. The kids all squealed and ran outside with their baskets in search of hidden eggs.
We really do have the most fabulous backyard for an egg hunt. We had plenty of trees and flowers and holes for all the eggs. Hopefully Easter next year is not a required social distancing, because we would love to have more kids included in the egg hunt next year. Kevin had fun putting eggs super high in the trees, making the older girls reach up on their tippy toes. The best part about the egg hunt was my miscalculation on counting the eggs. After each of the kids had 10 eggs each, they noticed there was more eggs around the yard. It took a bit to realise that I had counted wrong, and that I had included Kevin and I in the egg hunt. Big Sis quickly did the math and we realised that each of the kids get to find 5 more eggs a piece. They were ecstatic, and all ran out and continued the search for eggs. In the end, we still miscounted and there were 2 eggs still missing. The kids came inside and we figured we would find the last eggs sometime in the future.
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