Easter and an Update

Say Hey, May!

Yep, April went right on by and with it spring break, my favorite boy turning 8 and Easter. And on that note…

I was hoping to get my Easter decorations up, take some photos, and do a post before Easter, but life events got in the way and that didn’t happen. So, while I’m not here to inspire you with spring decor, you can at least see what we had going on here at our home. Actually, have. We are still all done up. Will probably pack those bunnies and lambs up this weekend.

It was pretty simple really. Several things have been gifts from my mom over the years. Like the bunnies that sit above the back door and the bunny family on the mirrored chest. I found those pink pom branches (I’m not sure what they’re called, supposed to be pussy willow?) on display at a local furniture store sale and I hung egg wreaths on a few doors.

For transparency purposes, this is what this view looks like in real life:

Yep. Weights and mats in plain sight. All the time. We live in a small house and I do my workout right where I’m standing on that open piece of floor.

Pretty eggs (from Pottery Barn several years ago) fill the bases of the topiaries on the dining room table…

Straw bunnies sit on the credenza on either side of the TV and a stack of Easter books sits on the ottoman.

As you know, we are book lovers and holiday books are among our favorites. Our addition this year was The Easter Egg by Jan Brett. I stumbled upon it while reading to a child I tutor on Friday mornings, then bought it on the Amazon app immediately for my kids. I love the lesson of kindness and bravery.

As much as we do love all our bunnies – and we have them throughout the house – we try to live by that saying on that little hanger (above) my mom gave us a couple years ago.

And we have this, on the bookshelf (made by Joe’s grandaddy about 70 years ago!) that sits in the little hallway connecting the kids’ bedrooms…

I set out a mama sheep and three little lambs, along with the season-appropriate Pat the Bunny book – both the real version and the one we designed as an activity for Joseph’s themed first birthday party (all the details of that here.)

This bird’s nest I painted a couple years ago hangs in the kids’ bathroom, fitting the spring theme perfectly. I strung a felt egg garland across the shower curtain. This one was bought, not made, but it wouldn’t be hard to do so – just trace a template on various colors and glue them to a ribbon. I had the curtain made years ago for the jack-n-jill bathroom Hannah and Joseph shared in our last house. It was a balance of the colors used in their bedrooms, but it livens up our main bathroom working in this house, too.

I did make the plastic egg garland in Hannah’s room. (Also pretty simple; you can see how I did it here.) The jumbo-sized glitter eggs hang on their bedroom doors with little Easter ornaments made by my sister-in-law.

And that’s pretty much it as far as decorations go. See, not too crazy.

Now on to our actual Easter…

But first, Palm Sunday. Our church, Shoreline, hosted an egg hunt and lunch in the community park behind the movie theater where we worship. My mom came in town to help and, with a lot of volunteers, things went pretty well.

That dress is my favorite, by the way. I might cry when she outgrows it and, since it’s last year’s Easter dress, that will happen pretty soon I imagine.

In Shoreline Kids (where I’m working most Sunday mornings), we made “palm” branches, and wrote our monthly memory verse: In this world you will have trouble. But be encouraged! I have won the battle over the world. (John 16:33) It was a cute activity and fun illustration of Jesus’ triumphal entrance into Jerusalem. All month long we’ve been talking about Hope and how it relates to God’s character. How we can trust Him. How He keeps His promises. How He is powerful and bigger than our problems and questions.

Man, I needed those reminders just as much as the kids. And that is most definitely a verse we can all identify with, isn’t it? The battle is won.

Right in the middle of Holy Week, we celebrated!

Joseph turned 8 on Thursday and that day was PACKED. He had school. Joe had an all-day event. Hannah had parent observation at dance. And it was the spring carnival at school.

But we squeezed in as much birthday fun as we could. Joe went and got fresh cinnamon rolls early in the morning, we met a friend for ice cream, and we carnival-ed. And he opened presents throughout the day. This year everything was LEGOs or money (“dolla dolla bills, y’all”). He got lots of dollar bills in the mail from family and friends and he was very excited about that.

He ate 8 pieces of bacon for dinner (his other-than-pizza favorite food) and we had ice cream cake.

Over Friday and Saturday, we did Resurrection Eggs together. If you do not know about these and you have kids (or kids to give them to), you need to check them out!

Great way to tell the story of Easter and involve the whole family. We take turns reading and opening. We’ve had ours for several years and Hannah and Joseph love it!

Then we decorated eggs every which way.

We colored wooden ones with the EggMazing machine, which is super cool by the way…

We dyed boiled eggs using the cool whip and food coloring method (found on Pinterest)…

And we dyed some the old-fashioned way with Paas cups…

…Stopping to snack on empty tomb rolls, a fun (and yummy) treat and family Easter weekend tradition. They are made with crescent rolls, cinnamon sugar and marshmallows. Each ingredient symbolizes Jesus (marshmallow), being anointed and wrapped in linen (butter and cinnamon), and laid in the tomb (crescent roll), rising on the third day (the roll is empty when you open it up after cooking).

Easter Sunday at the movie theater!

I actually did not wear my volunteer t-shirt and enjoyed being in a dress, matching my little Easter-y family!

In years passed, we’ve tried to squeeze the baskets into the early morning madness before church, but it’s so rushed and Joe (and Joseph) leave so early on Sunday mornings. It’s always less chaotic when we do it in the afternoon.

They each got a couple of things to wear (including a new swim suit), a nice water bottle for soccer, and a movie (Mary Poppins Returns for her, Rogue One for him). I try not to spend more than $100 on each of their baskets and make sure there is plenty of the good candy.

On that note…

This was how Joe and I did our Easter baskets. 😉 A Reese’s-filled basket is a well-filled basket. As I said on my Instagram stories, “The longest Reese’s gap is between the Easter Eggs and the Halloween Pumpkins. Here’s to stocking up!”

A friend gave us confetti celebration eggs. My mom says I did this as a kid but I don’t remember, so it was basically a new experience for all of us.