Easter at our house

If you've read my blog for any length of time, you know that Easter is a special day at our house. It's one of the many things in life that was changed when A&K lived with us. You see, prior to their moving in, my kids had never done anything for Easter that wasn't Christ-centered. We preferred to focus them on the truth of the holiday & not bring in anything 'worldly'. At that time, Savannah & Samuel were the only ones who had been to school & heard about egg hunts & bunnies & baby chicks. I wasn't so much opposed to them doing that AT SCHOOL but I didn't really want to go there at home. Like so many other things in my life, I'm an all or nothing sort of girl. I couldn't see how there could possibly be a balance between the spiritual & the worldly stuff, so I just completely skipped the worldly stuff.

And then Andrew & Kourtney joined our family. These two precious babies who had been through, well, Hell & back....their dad was in prison, their mom was gone, they'd been homeless & witnessed some of the most God-awful stuff you can imagine. They had so little in their life that had been constant and when Easter approached, they talked with excitement about the upcoming day...with egg hunts & bunnies & all those things. I cringed. I wrinkled my nose. My eyebrows furrowed. And then I went to Walmart & bought 5 Easter baskets, a bunch of plastic eggs & candy and a heap load of that plastic grass stuff.

Having the kids with us that year led me to seek out a way to find a balance between the spiritual & the worldly stuff. New traditions were formed and we found a way to make it work...and even though A&K moved out in March of 2007, three years later, the balance is still working. While I never imagined my kids would learn about dying eggs and chocolate bunnies, I am sooo very happy to say that if asked to tell you the REAL Easter story, all three of my kids could do it without a second's hesitation!

One of my favorite 'tools' for our Easter celebration are the Resurrection Eggs created by FamilyLife. You can find & buy them by clicking here.




The eggs are a great visual tool to share the Easter story with kids. Each egg contains one small item that represents something from the story. For example, one egg contains a few (fake) coins. These represent the coins Judas was payed by the government to lead them to Jesus. Another holds a tiny plastic donkey (the triumphal entry), another one holds a little piece of leather (the whip). As you go through each egg, there are Scriptures to read to explain the story to the children. The final egg (Sarah's holding it above) is empty--to symbolize the empty tomb. Our kids hunt eggs as well, but before they dig into those eggs, we open the Resurrection Eggs. It is important to us to help them remember the real reason for this holiday before they go head-first into a sugar high.

This morning we went to church. We came home & had devilled eggs with ham and cheese sandwiches before we hunted eggs. Yesterday, we dyed eggs. (Those became the devilled eggs that we ate today!)

I'll leave you with a few pictures we took this morning of everyone in their Easter clothes. Enjoy! I hope you & yours had a fabulous Easter!