Easter Sunday Traditions

From a couple of my previous posts, one may have noticed that I have been in the "establishing traditions" mode.  Easter was no exception.  To keep it simple and sweet I am going to briefly fly through what our household does on Easter Sunday.

We start off with a "Christ-themed Scavenger Hunt."  First, the girls found hidden eggs that held scriptures, passages, or the like about the Resurrection of Christ. After discussing that and receiving hints as to where the Easter baskets were hiding, they set off to search for them.

 

Success!

 Happy girls.

Growing up, my grandparents and parents would hide Easter eggs for all the grandchildren to find on Easter Sunday, and along with those eggs my grandmother always hide a silver and gold one.  The beholder of these eggs would have to take them to my grandmother to receive a cash prize.  I have fond memories of these hunts because I found one of the eggs a few times in a row. As a 10 year old, I thought I was a excellent Easter-egg hunter!  Anyways, this year we had a golden egg to find, and lucky Sailor was $1.50 winner!

I decided puzzles on Easter would be a fun tradition. It's a quiet, family activity, appropriate for the Sabbath.  So this year I got it at the 99 cent store for $0.50.  It was the best purchase for our Easter festivities because Sailor was gotten this puzzle out numerous times since then and I can't help but fall in  love with the cute little picture it makes every time. 

Another new tradition I started this year, is our braided bread.  Since Easter Sunday will always fall on a Fast Sunday, I love the idea of coming home as a family and breaking our fast by 'breaking our bread.'  I think it a great reminder of our Savior and what he actually did for our lives by atoning for our sins.  We break our fast in prayer and then with bread....it's simple and so symbolic.  I tried making it look like a wreath, but better luck next year.

Easter Week

We had such a fun, eventful week leading up to Easter Sunday.  I feel so blessed to be in a community surrounded by so many people who are in the exact situation as we are; students, young families living away from their own families, young moms trying to keep their young ones entertained, etc.  Because of this fun "community" in which we live, it seems like we always stay busy during the holidays and they are always extra fun.  Once we leave here, I know I will miss it so much.

So to start off our week, Monday night we had a FHE lesson on the meaning of Easter and why it's so important.  Which leads me to the question: how do you teach the complexity of the "Atonement" and the "Resurrection of Christ" to a 3 and 1 1/2 year old??

Not to mention the "Crucifixion," which is another topic that seems so violent and convoluted for a child to grasp....

well, we did our best. ;)

Tuesday we met up with my cousin and her family in Mesa for dinner and then to the Easter Pageant at the Mesa Temple.  This was our first time watching this presentation of Christ's Life and the Resurrection.  They did a fantastic job of telling the story.  I'm glad we went!  I did, however, have to answer these kinds of questions for 3 curious, little girls (between our 2 families we have 5 girls under 6 years old).
 ...the questions were constant:

"what are they doing?
"why are they doing that?"--referring to singing
"why are they walking?"
"why is that angel up there?"
"why are they doing that?--refering to angels blowing trumpets
"why is there a donkey there?"
"what is Jesus doing?"--referring to Christ talking to people
"why are the bad guys doing that?"

It was hilarious. And most of the time I didn't have an answer so they would continue answering the same question until I gave them an answer...sometimes this required maybe a not-so-true answer. :)

The next day we went to the park for our Annual Playgroup Easter Egg Hunt.  It's always a good time.  The girls knew exactly what to do.  Even Seryn knew what hid inside those colorful eggs.  She didn't hesitate a second to pop open her first egg and start practically inhaling that first piece of candy.  Sailor really wanted to wear this adorable headband so of course I said yes.  I got one picture of her wearing it and then the second later, "Mom, I don't want to wear this."---of course not, it's just too incredibly darling to wear for more than 15 minutes. :)

Like I said, always a good time and always surrounded by good friends!

   Sailor was such a sweetheart helping Seryn find eggs.  I noticed Sailor stopped picking eggs up for herself and would run them over to put in Seryn's basket.

I've decided recently that Seryn is just like me (for many reasons I will have to document another day).  One reason, though, is her love of chocolate and peanut butter.  In this picture for instance, she sat down and devoured a couple Reese's Cups right off the bat.  She went into those morsels without ripping the wrapper entirely off.  She decided there was no time for that meticulous work, so the next easiest thing was to suck it out....

I guess you wouldn't find me sucking out candy out of wrappers, but sometimes peanut butter and chocolate would make me consider that if I could get it in my system faster. ;)

Then, later that day we were so graciously invited to a friends' 6th birthday party.  It was a costume party which was a hit because the kids all looked so great!  Sailor had a blast running around with the crowd while Seryn tried to sneak treats and escape the back yard- Seryn has become quite the handful these days.

The kids made purses or treasure boxes for the "treasure" they found inside of the pinata, face-painting, mask-making, and cookie decorating were the activities.

The following Saturday, Chase's school put on their Annual Easter Egg Hunt. Chase wasn't able to come with us since he had an important class meeting, but the girls & I went and enjoyed ourselves.

At this event, lots of crafts are available, snacks, bounce houses, the Easter Bunny makes an appearance, and the 5-second long egg hunt.  Each year I am amazed at how fast those hundreds of eggs are picked up, and I swear each year it went faster and faster.

And FINALLY, later that evening we colored our eggs.  The kids were entranced by the fizzing color dye pill that dissolved in the water & vinegar mixture.  My kids love to eat hard-boiled eggs, so before we were even done using the dye, Seryn had dove her fingers into egg trying to peel the shell off and Sailor did the same has she finished decorating the eggs with stickers.  They turned out darling! 

Dinosaurs

For the past year and a half Sailor has been involved in a preschool group that is Mommy taught.  There are four kids in the group and each week one of the moms teaches the lesson.  We have a curriculum and topics that we arbitrarily created a while back.  It has been a success and a great way for our kids to have something to do that involves  learning some social skills once a week, along with some education. :)

Last week I taught a lesson on dinosaurs.  This lesson was particularly fun because they kids were very intrigued.  As I prepared for the lesson I kept thinking, "Dinosaurs were completely amazing.  And the fact that we have learned everything about them from fossils is quite impressive."  What a weird thing for a child to hear..."Dinosaurs once roamed the earth- we have or will never see them.  Most were huge, bigger than buildings.  Paleontologists find their fossils and puzzle-piece them back together..... "

Like I said, the kids really enjoyed the lesson so I took a few pictures of the fun.  I didn't get a picture of it but we dug for dinosaur bones in a tupperware container full of potato flakes (I didn't have time to find sand).  I printed off a picture of a dinosaur skeleton and cut it up in several pieces and laid it out in proper order underneath the "dirt".  With a paint brush the kids very gently brushed the flakes off of the skeleton to find the whole dinosaur picture. The kids were adorable.  I had never seen a 3 year old be so gentle.  If one got a little to rough they'd keep each other in line by saying, "Be soft!  We don't want to ruin the bones!"

We made dinosaur feet, and this is what Sailor thinks they looked like.

 I asked the kids to show me their dinosaur faces/impression. They didn't slack at the request.

And you can't talk about dinosaurs without mentioning volcanoes! 

The kids were really concerned about how and what was making it explode.  They were fascinated!  They were also very concerned about the little dinosaurs getting hit by hot lava. ha 

Once preschool is over we let the kids run wild while the moms visit and vent to one another about parenting ups and downs. As we sat and chatted we noticed all the kids silently group together in the hallway with books to read and notebooks to draw in.  The second I grabbed my camera a couple kids dispersed but at one point 6-7 kids were sitting side by side- it was cute. 

Leach the Leprechaun

A couple weeks ago I had an epiphany!  The night before St. Patrick's Day I was talking to my good friend about the holidays and the topic of traditions.  We talked about St. Patty's Day specifically and the things we weren't doing to celebrate the holiday.

After talking about this and that and how fun certain traditions were as kids or what other family members were doing in their homes, I got home and stuck my foot down.  I thought, "Dang it, Kiya,   you are not going to deprive your kids of memories because you procrastinate or lack motivation to celebrate any and EVERY holiday- even St. Patty's Day!"

I've noticed too many times in my life that I will pass up opportunities, shrug things off like they're nothing special,  or be too lazy to be "excited" about the small things.  But, I've finally come to realize (and I know it's because I am a slow learner) that celebrating the little things brings zest to life and teaches us (and hopefully our kids) to have an excited attitude for the small and simple things.  Looking forward to little surprises and making sweet memories will bring our families closer and remind us why we need to be grateful for life.

After proclaiming to celebrate St. Patty's, I decided I needed to do a little research, because quite honestly I didn't know much about St. Patrick and why we feel the need to wear green and catch leprechauns on this special day.  And then for the next couple hours I jumped up and pulled together a little surprise for the kiddos.  I'm really excited for next year, because I think we will have to start making Leprechaun traps.

Like I said, totally thrown together last minute, which gave me no time for rough drafts! This was a little note left behind by our little leprechaun friend named "Leach."

According to online sources, leprachauns like to prank...I think I always knew this but I didn't know that they are Irish fairies who collect coins and hide them in hidden pots of gold at the end of the rainbow.  I always thought they were trying to find gold at the end of rainbows not putting it there...then again my research mainly came from wikipedia.

Leach left notes around the house.   Here, he played with the girls' green toys.

And then read all the green books in the house.

The girls thought it was hilarious that Rapunzel was holding a green candle. "Silly Leprechaun!" Sailor said.


Did you know Leprechauns like to mend shoes?  I didn't. Again, thank you wikipedia.  Leach didn't actually "mend" the girls' church shoes, but he did take a rag to them and washed the months worth of dirt from them.

The green milk was another favorite prank.  Sailor was amazed!

Chase was able to record their reactions as they walked through the house. We all wore plenty of green to church and then had a lovely GREEN dinner at a friends' house.  I am so grateful for the little lesson I learned this past month, because it really is the small and simple that bring us joy!