Easter

I love Easter. I love it- it is my favorite holiday (in the sense of holy-day)- because of it's spiritual significance.

Cooper also loves Easter. Less so because of it's spiritual significance, and mostly because it involves an insane amount of chocolate.

We started the celebration a day early with an Egg Hunt at Grandma and Grandpa's house. It's weird. The Easter bunny leaves CASH in some of these eggs. Why he doesn't do that at our house, I'm not sure! As a result of the cash, the competition is fierce

Yes, that's a $20 bill in Cooper's loot bag. He was the big Easter winner this year. Why can't I get in on the egg hunting action?

Easter morning, the kids had a quick egg hunt before we headed off to church.

We hosted Easter dinner for a total of 17 people, even WITHOUT a working stove top or oven. That was interesting. Chloe and I discovered Hershey's Kisses stickers, and we love them. We especially enjoyed these FREE printables for our Easter kisses!

After dinner, the kids dug right into their candy. I love how they went directly for the huge chocolate bunny! :)

All in all, it was a great day- but getting a great family picture? That's next to impossible! This was the best we could accomplish!

Thankfully, Chloe is alway photogenic.

It was a great week preparing for and then celebrating Easter. I thought the kids had a really good understanding (as much as a 5 or 6 year old could understand) of Christ's sacrifice for us and of what His resurrection means. The just yesterday though, Cooper prayed this prayer:

Dear Jesus, thank you that you got down off that cross and you didn't died. Thank you for putting our sins in that big hole behind the rock. Thank you, Jesus. Amen.


So, I think maybe something got a little lost in translation there. We're gonna keep working on that!

One last note along those lines: just a couple of days before Easter, I discovered this awesome way to help your kids experience and understand the Easter story. I did some of this with the kids, but really limited because I didn't have all the stuff on hand. However, I am bookmarking it, and I am definitely going to do it in it's entirety with the kids next year. (In fact, if you have not already bookmarked the Impress Your Kids blog, then you are really missing out!)

Lastly, Easter morning service brought me to tears with an amazing presentation of the following song in church by a friend of mine. I had heard it before, but that morning, the truth of it moved me to tears. I meditated on these words all week long. I hope you are as encouraged by it as I have been.

I am His because He is ALIVE!