Easter

Each year when Easter comes I always decide that I am going to do things to make Easter more Christ centered. We do have traditions that we carry out each year to try and accomplish this goal. We start our Easter celebration off on Palm Sunday. We read stories about the symbolism of the palm branches and sometimes we make our own palm branches and act out the triumphal entry. We always read a bit in the scritptures each day, of the Saviors last week here on earth. After reading we hang up corresponding gospel art pictures, from our kit, on our wall. We leave these up for the following week. My children love this and always start asking when it is time to start the picture time line.
This year Karl and I decided that we wanted to take the Easter Bunny out of Easter. Where did he come from anyway? We felt like it was time. We prayed about it and felt impressed to go with our feelings. We have a tradition that we always put the Easter baskets out on Saturday so that Sunday can be left for more reverent and relevant things. This year we put cards in each of our childrens baskets that read something like this: "To our sweet children, On this holy holiday we celebrate God's greatest gift to us, the life of our Savior. With these fun gifts we wish you a Happy Easter. We hope you will always remember the special reason we celebrate Easter. With love, Mom and Dad." After they read this card and got done looking through their baskets we started getting the questions we knew would come. So when does the Easter Bunny come? or I thought the Easter Bunny brought us our baskets? It was a great oppurtunity to explain to them that we had decided that we didn't need the Easter Bunny at our house. We explained to them that Easter was about Jesus, not the Easter Bunny and we wanted Jesus to know that we loved him more than anything. We went on to explain that Heavenly Father and Jesus gave the whole world the greatest gift that anyone could ever give: First Jesus came to earth, lived a PERFECT life, suffered many hardships and much condemnation, loved and served everyone, lived selflessly everyday never thinking of himself, and then allowed his life to end, not in glory or respect, but in pain, suffering, abuse, mockery, and death never once cursing or hating anyone. And He did all of this for US! We told them that no Easter basket could ever replace the gift that we celebrate at Easter but that their dad and I wanted to give them the Easter baskets to help them remember the joy that comes from gifts. One day, if we live the best we know how, we will come to fully understand the joy that will come from the gift that Jesus gave us on Easter, 2008 years ago. The kids were very excited and understanding. Taking the Easter Bunny out of Easter didn't bother them and boy was I relieved! It was funny though, several people asked Jacee what the Easter Bunny brought her this year and she said: "The Easter Bunny doesn't come to my house." Needless to say we got some concerned looks, it worried me, but the only looks I should really be concerned with is the looks my Savior gives me. We recieved a confirmation of approval of our desire to make Easter more about Jesus and that's all that matters. I hope you all had a wonderful, peaceful, joyful, Happy Easter!

This year we added to our tradition by making oil lamps out of scoupley clay. then we burned them the night we read and discussed the parable of the 10 virgins. It was a fun addition to our scripture reading. Here is a photo of the three lamps the kids made:

For Easter we also did all of the usual things:

Colored Easter Eggs

Had Easter Egg Hunts

On Saturday we roasted hot dogs in the wind at our property and enjoyed our families company!

Over the Easter holiday we also did some very unusal things:

Like digging trench and laying water pipe! Blah! I don't recomend incorporating this into your Easter traditions! By the way thanks so much to Uncle Jim (my trench rat partner), Aunt Kneen, Mike and Jill for all their help! Even if they laughed right out loud at me when I fell flat of my butuskie in the trench! LOL!

Jax is taking a welcomed break from the work. He is sharing his lunch with Sugar.

Nor would I reccomend burning houses down as a traditional event! But it was very intriguing. It's not everyday you get to conduct an expeirement of house burning ON PURPOSE! It was amazing to see how fast and how hot a fire can burn. Both the big boys and the little ones were totally impressed! I have to admit the girls and I were pretty engrossed also. Now why was we burning a house down, you ask? Well because it was caving in and mouse infested and it is, or should I say was, on our property. We didn't want the kids getting in there and getting hurt or getting sick!

Here is the house or should I say the "Haunted House" as all the little kids in the neighborhood used to call it. My kids are and thier cousins are standing in front of the house just minutes before we start in on fire.

The kids are saying good-bye to the Haunted house!

The kids are watching pretty closely as the house starts on fire! It doesn't take them long to move quite a far ways back and shed their jackets. It was amazing how hot it got!

Carter (above) was a little uncomfortable with the fire. I thought it was cute that he went that far back to observe the fire. He wanted to be sure he was a safe distance away.

In a matter of just minutes like maybe 20 from start to finish the whole house was burnt to the ground but, there was one pole remaining. Jax couldn't have that. So he tried.....

And Mason tried.....

And Karl tried........

Then Carter got fed up with all the trying and gave Uncle KK the tool he needed to do the job right and.......

It worked! Jax, as you can see, considered them victorious!