A Wondrous Holy Week and Easter Sunday

My sister sent me this cute story from her 4 year-old grandson Caden who snuggled up in his “other” grandmother’s bed early in the morning last week and said,

“Gama, did you see our Easter eggs? They’re DEAD!

Shocked she replied, “What? They’re dead?”

“Yep,’ he replied, “We dyed ‘em.”

What a wonderland for kids Easter is with all the eggs, bunnies, candy and surprises! Sadly, often the true meaning of Easter, just like the try meaning of “dying” gets lost in the festivities and kids spend more time thinking about the Easter Bunny than they do about the most miraculous event that has occurred in the history of time on earth….the resurrection! 

I have to admit that we didn’t do a really terrific job of changing that “tradition” at our house when our kids were little. We got new Easter clothes for everyone, colored the eggs, bought the candy, set out the baskets complete with surprises and fun things to play with. And then we went to church.  In our defense we did have discussions at our Sunday dinner table about the events surrounding the crucifixion and resurrection and I’m sure the kids felt a special love for Jesus on that day.

BUT our kids have taken Holy Week and the celebration of the true meaning of Easter to a whole new level (actually several levels!  These mothers and fathers spends special time during Holy Week discussing in detail the events of those final days of Jesus with their kids. Many include a Passover meal with similar foods that Jesus and His apostles might have enjoyed at “The Last Supper” and so much more.

Our daughter Saydi who lives in Boston almost killed herself trying to hammer home the importance of Holy Week and Jesus’ sacrifice with her kids this year. In fact there were days when she wanted to kill the kids too, who didn’t seem to appreciate what she was doing. To hear the end of this fun story take a look at her brilliantly written blog post here.

What a joy it is to a mom when she realizes that some things actually “get through”! 

We had the most wonderful Holy Week and Easter this year. Dad/Richard and I read the events of that last week of the Savior’s life and the scriptures that went along with it each day. I read while he was on the elliptical and then we traded places. New ideas opened up to us and we loved what we learned. 

Then on Easter Sunday we had the privilege of teaching a joint meeting with the men and women at our church on the subject of “Entitlement and The Atonement.”  It was a terrific discussion with a very bright group and again, we learned. After that we taught our Sunday School class, which is a group of admirable young parents who continued to teach us!

After church we visited headed for Ogden to get our “kid fix” and a wonderful Easter dinner with the Looslis. 

 

Dinner was scrumptious!  How could it be anything else when accompanied by Jared’s famous potatoes?

 

After dinner we had a little “money” Easter egg hunt and somehow managed to fix it so all the kids got a comparable amount of money (a first for us…a tradition handed down from Rick’s brother).

And we ended it with the kids opening plastic eggs with each containing something that depicted the last week of Christ’s life and the resurrection. For example, a round stone was in one egg symbolizing the stone at the tomb, a scripture in another and an empty egg symbolizing the empty tomb in another. There’s that good Mother there keeping us “on track” to the end of that wondrous day!

You can find Saren’s plethora of wonderful ideas to celebrate Easter week with kids here.