Easter 2010

We had a really nice Easter this year, although it was a little different than normal.   Jim has been doing a LOT of traveling for work, and we had the opportunity to go with him this last trip, but we had to leave on Easter Sunday.  So instead of having a nice meal, doing an Easter egg hunt, etc. on Sunday, we did it on Saturday and left for Salem, Virginia on Sunday. 

It ended up being really nice.  We got up, had a some cereal,

and went through the Easter story using a new tool- Resurrection Eggs. 

I just bought them this year, and I'm glad that I did because they turned out to be a neat way to reinforce the true message of Easter in a fun, tactile way.  Each plastic egg has a Scripture passage, a story to read, and an object inside that pertains to the Easter story.  For example, the first egg had a miniature donkey inside- referring to Jesus' entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.  The boys took turns holding the object and we asked Ethan what he thought each item had to do with the Easter story.  The best part though was when we got to the last egg (spoiler-warning), and...

..the egg was empty!  It was neat to see Ethan's reaction.  Here he is explaining that it is empty because Jesus rose from the dead!

Then we did our Easter egg hunt in the living room.  Below is Micah's version of the empty egg:

Anytime he found an egg, he wanted to open it, so the candy went spilling all over the place.

Later on that day, we went to an Easter egg hunt at a church down the road.  It wasn't really an egg hunt, but a candy hunt, but the kids didn't mind :-)  It was great.  The church had some fun songs at the beginning, they presented the gospel, then the kids went hunting for candy by age.  Here's Micah at  the starting line:

It took him a minute to figure out what to do, but once he did, he was all over it. 

Here we are at the end.

That evening we enjoyed some ham, sweet potato casserole, coleslaw, and some Easter cupcakes- a sweet finish to a sweet day.