The Dyal Dish: Easter 2008

We had a nice, but cold Easter this year. Joshua had Good Friday off and we had planned to take the family to a science center that is close to the Detroit temple, about a 25 minute drive away. But that morning, we looked at the weather forecast and it was predicted that we would get 5 - 7 inches of snow that day. So instead of braving the cold and snow, we stayed home and had a movie party. It was nice having a lazy, fun day at home together.

On Saturday morning, we went to our ward Easter party at church. We ate breakfast, had a nice Easter program in the chapel, and then the primary children hunted for Easter eggs hidden by the youth around the church. In year's past, the egg hunt was outside, but this year the weather prevented it from being an outdoor Easter hunt. (Having snow on Easter weekend was a real downer!) I brought Easter baskets for my kids to collect their eggs in, even bringing one for Spencer --- I almost forgot that he is in Young Men's now. He helped to hide the Easter eggs with the youth instead. It's been hard getting use to the fact that he is in the YOUTH now.

In the afternoon, we decided to go out to lunch with the kids and then we met some friends at the movies to see "Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who". I wasn't sure if I'd like that movie or not since the previews made it look kind-of dull, but it was much better than I thought it would be. The kids especially enjoyed it. Afterwards, we went home and colored Easter eggs. The kids LOVE doing this every year. It seems like I never make enough boiled eggs for them to color. This year I made 2 dozen .... and, in the kid's opinion, that still wasn't enough! They wanted more! But I didn't want to be eating boiled eggs for the next month so I told them two dozen would be sufficient this year.

They got real creative with their eggs this year. Alex decided he wanted a black one, but of course we only had the colors red, yellow, orange, blue, purple, and green. He spent about half an hour dipping the egg in every single color until it was black. Spencer and Jessica made multi-colored striped eggs. And Logan used the white crayon to write words and draw pictures on his eggs before dyeing them different colors. Logan has become the craftiest of all my children. He could spend all day writing, coloring, stamping, gluing, and cutting to create all sorts of unique and interesting crafts. He loves it! I find his "masterpieces", along with bits and pieces of cut-up paper, all over the house. So while we were coloring eggs this year, he wanted to write and draw all sorts of things on them. And after they were dry, he put wanted to finish them up by putting stickers and stamps all over them. What a funny kid!

I wanted to do my "Easter Walk" (see post below) on Saturday with the family this year, but since it was so snowy outside, I thought we would wait until Sunday morning to do it before going to church. It's been important to me to make Easter more spiritual for the children this year. Sometimes we focus too much on the Easter bunny and candy, but this year, I wanted it to be different. I still like making it fun for them, but I wanted them to really think about Christ's Atonement and resurrection a lot more this year. We're going to make the "Easter Walk" a tradition every year from now on.

Sunday morning, the kids woke us up at 8:00 and we went downstairs for our Easter morning egg/candy hunt. The Easter bunny comes to our house every year and hides candy and eggs all around the house and fills the kid's baskets with lots of goodies and surprises. Each one of them got a Webkinz stuffed animal in their basket which was the BIG HIT of Easter! Then, we had our customary Easter breakfast of boiled Easter eggs, bacon, toast and OJ. After cleaning up breakfast, we all went outside to find the items we needed for our "Easter Walk", which instead ended up being an "Easter Sit-in-Our-Living-Room". We brought the items inside and had a very uplifting and spiritual talk as we read scriptures on Christ's Atonement and sang some songs and hymns. It was really, really nice. I saw tears in Spencer and Jessica's eyes when we talked about Jesus suffering in Gethsemane, when He hung and died on the cross, and when He was resurrected that Sunday morning long ago. I bore my testimony to them and the spirit was very strong. I could tell that they were very touched.

Then we got ready for church and watched "Enchanted" (a surprise from the Easter Bunny) until we needed to leave. Our ward doesn't start until 2:00 but we needed to be there by 1:15 to practice for the choir's Easter program. Joshua is the ward choir director and I sing in choir (mostly because of Joshua's consistent urging). We had some really beautiful songs that I believe were very well received. Joshua had lots of compliments after Sacrament Meeting was over. And speaking of the sacrament, Sunday was Spencer's first week to pass the sacrament. He was so nervous before church. I think he was afraid to mess up. I told him he would do a terrific job, and he did, although he was obviously the youngest boy passing the sacrament. He looked so little and so young; it was so sweet to watch him. Afterwards he told me it was easy and he wasn't sure why he was so worried. He's excited to do it again next week.

After church, we were invited to eat at a friend's house for Easter dinner. It was nice not to worry about a big Easter dinner after a long day of church (it felt really long that day for some reason ...). I brought rolls and Strawberry Shortcake for dessert. We talked and playing games until it was pretty late, but the guys don't have work on Monday and the kids don't have school all week. This next week is our Spring Break week. We are excited to have a slow but fun week off school. Too bad the weather won't be very good. We have highs of only 40 degrees and more snow is predicted. Won't seem like much of a "spring" week. I had visions of bike rides and picnics. Guess we'll have to wait another month or so....