Monday, April 1, 2013

Easter Fun and Easter Meaning

Eggs. Plastic eggs are everywhere. All colors. All themes. In all rooms of my house. And, likely under all pieces of furniture in my house. And in the dryer. And in the fruit drawer of the fridge. Everywhere, I tell you, everywhere.

Since Nana came earlier in the month and delivered a basket full of eggs with treasures, and since my kids participated in two egg hunts, and since I had oodles of eggs from years prior, there is no shortage of Easter eggs around here.
Tomorrow while my youngest is napping and while my older two are outside playing, it's my mission to collect them all, stash them in a bin in the attic, and forget about them until next March when Easter fun rolls back around.

I've seen several Facebook posts and websites listing bunches and bunches of ideas for using the seemingly hundreds of eggs we have all over the place, but I kind of think that even if I choose one or two of those fantastic ideas it still requires me to look at, step over, and help retrieve-from-under-the-couch all those eggs. And I'm not up for that. Clutter and me don't work well. Ever.
So they're headed to the attic. I know, I'm mean and I'm an organization fanatic. 

Plastic Easter eggs aside, our family had a wonderful Easter day - well, a wonderful Easter season, actually.
The kids and I spent many afternoons reading books about the meaning of Easter and assembling various crafts representing the Easter story. For all the reading and all the discussing we did, however, if you ask Annalyse what Easter means she'll answer, "Jesus died in my heart!" with an excited shout and a huge grin. I think she has tried to mesh asking Jesus into her heart with dying on the cross and rising from the dead. That's some profound two-year old theology if you ask me.
My boys look forward to our neighborhood egg hunt each year. Eggs, candy, games, face painting, egg dying, and prizes... glad to know our HOA dues are being put to use for sugar to hype my kids and plastic eggs for me to accumulate and store. But seriously, it is a fun morning as a family and with neighbors.
Earlier this month the kids helped me print, laminate, and cut twelve pictures to tell the Easter story. Each picture was placed in a - wait for it - plastic egg. On Easter Eve, Grady led the kids in taking turns opening each egg and reading a piece of correlating Scripture to tell the story of what Jesus did for us through Easter.

Grady Lee was very into the whole thing and eager to see what was in each egg, even though he'd already looked through them multiple times earlier in the month. Micah was quick to point out that "our eggs aren't the same as the Resurrection Eggs we use at church because our eggs only have pieces of paper in them and not toys that tell us about Jesus." And Annalyse just continued her diatribe about Jesus dying in her heart. 

I'm sure that somewhere in all of that our kids learned a thing or two, and I know that at the very least, we enjoyed an hour of family time talking about Jesus and reading his Word.
Some gracious (and brave) friends opened their home to our family and several others for Easter lunch. With nine kids under the age of nine it was loud and crazy, but fun. Lots of fun. Especially when the host almost fell into a man-hole during the egg hunt. And when the kids needed multiple outfit changes because of wet sand and grass from and early-morning rain. And when the kids realized that coins were in the eggs and not candy. I may or may not have heard from my five year old "I'm going to be rich enough to buy a basketball hoop!" several times that day because of his new pile of dimes and nickels.
So now that the Easter holiday is over, I'm bent on gathering and stashing the plastic eggs. But, now that the Easter holiday is over I'm focused on finding ways to remind my kids as often as I can that each day we have is a gift from God. Each blessing we experience is a gift we don't deserve. The joy and hope we have is because of God's sacrifice on our behalf. The foundation of our faith and the purpose of our worship is valid because Jesus is alive. Easter gives meaning to everything we are today and everything we will enjoy one day

2 comments:

  1. love reading how you teach your children, always inspiring. Faith says that Jesus lives in her stomach.

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  2. Sounds like a wonderful Easter season! I'm with you on the plastic eggs though. I made Nana take all the ones she brought home with her to save for next year. Since they're so cheap, I'm even tempted to just trash the ones we have instead of lugging them up to the attic. ;)

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