Easter Fun!

So I think that this year's Easter was the best one we've had yet... Mainly because we were able to focus more on the REAL meaning of Easter during the week before, which really helped set the tone for the big day.  We used several ideas from the book "A Christ-Centered Easter" (which I TOTALLY recommend!) including making unleavened bread & some Easter Cookies where each ingredient has symbolism of something in the Death & Resurrection of Christ... We kept things pretty simple, but even on the days where all we did was talk about some aspect of Christ's life & read a few scriptures, I still felt like we were actually celebrating what the holiday was supposed to be about instead of just doing Easter-Egg hunts.  That being said, we did several Easter Egg hunts too...

We did an Easter hunt at my Parent's house the Sunday before Easter & then another one the next Saturday at my Grandpa Erickson's house.  The kids are always excited to find coins mixed in with their Easter candy & Skyler has already spent his!

Easter morning I woke up the kids with some loud Mormon Tabernacle Choir music singing "This is the Christ!" & we talked about how exciting it must have been to learn that Christ has risen from the dead.  It was the perfect starting to our Easter Sunday.  Then after breakfast, we sent the kids searching downstairs for their Easter Baskets (the toys were all hand-me-downs given to us from a neighbor!) & they played the rest of the morning with their new toys.  So fun & precious to watch their innocent excitement & squeals of delight!

Then, the Saturday after Easter, we had our Ward's Easter Egg Hunt in a neighbor's backyard, complete with their many fun farm animals for the kids to enjoy (ducks, rabbits, geese & even a llama!).  Skyler was a professional by now at running quickly & collecting loads of eggs, but Kimberly was too worried about the candy inside of the eggs that she was missing out on to want to gather very many eggs.  Luckily Skyler shared a few of his eggs with her!

Overall, it was such a great Easter... Lots of fun memories, spread over three different weekends.  And lots of great discussions & activities done just with our little family at home to learn more about the Savior & what he's done for us.  How grateful I am for his sacrifice, so that we too may live again with our families forever!