Easter 2013

My sweet girls

 

Still playing catch-up, but I have to share some pictures from our Easter celebrations this year.

 

From right to left:  Grace, Clara, Lydia, Ellarie, Madeline, Daniel, Aaron, Luke, Austin, and Avery

 

We started the morning off by celebrating with our small group from church.  We had breakfast and an egg hunt for the kids.  Our group has grown since we joined 2 years ago, and we've now split into two groups.  This celebration was a reunion of the two groups, but not all the families were able to make it.  Yes, there are even more kids who are not pictured here!  Clara loves her buddies from our small group.  She gets so excited to play with them when we meet each week.

Checking out the spoils of the hunt



 

After church, we headed to Matt's parents for lunch and another egg hunt.  The girls had a ball!

 

It's very important to us that Clara understands the true meaning of Easter.  The commercialism in the holiday almost overwhelms me, and we discussed not doing the Easter bunny with her this year.  It's so hard knowing the best approach to balance a religious holiday with the fun associated with other Easter traditions. 

 

We attempted to teach Clara about Easter.  Here's how that went:

N:  Clara do you know why we celebrate Easter?

C:  What's celebrate mean?

(I explained and rephrased the question.)

C:  No, why?

N:  We celebrate that Jesus rose from the dead.

C:  What's rose?

 

Well, that was harder than I thought!  I tried again on Easter morning.

N:  Clara do you know that today is Easter, and we celebrate that Jesus died on the cross and rose again?

C:  God didn't die!

 

Matt and I just looked at each other, and I said, well, let's hope they cover that in Sunday school today.

 

The little stinker was telling us all about the real meaning of Easter after church.  She was so matter-of-fact in her description - like, of course, everyone knows this!  Hats off to her Sunday school teachers because they were successful at accomplishing what I couldn't seem to explain in 4-year-old terms.  They also gave us some resurrection eggs, which I had heard of but didn't know much about.  It's similar to an advent calender except you open an egg each day, and the contents of the egg tells a portion of the Easter story.  I've put those away and will definitely be using them next year!