Easter Week

I love Holy Week! We started it off a day early on "Lazarus Saturday" this year. I've wanted to try making these "Lazarekia" rolls for a while now. They're like little men wrapped in grave clothes. So cute. And look how well we made them; just like the picture😄

Hahaha! As my friend so accurately pointed out, it is not very often you find a recipe that can be used for both Halloween and Easter.

Oh well. They tasted pretty good. Cinnamony and faintly sweet.

Goldie always arranges our little Easter crèche for the corresponding day of Holy Week. Here is Lazarus emerging from the tomb as everyone watches. "Lazarus, come forth!"

Because of General Conference being on Easter, our church Easter celebrations were on Palm Sunday. Daisy led the ward choir singing two beautiful Easter songs (have I mentioned she's the choir director?) and we had a piano-organ duet with the congregation on the last song, a rousing rendition of "He is Risen." So great. I love singing the Easter hymns! Even better, Abe and Malachi came to church with us and we had a big family dinner afterwards.

Palm Sunday and the Triumphal Entry

Golden-haired Goldie

My ministering sister made me this cute little Empty Tomb scene. I've always wanted to make one of these and I love it! We put it out as a centerpiece on one of our tables for Palm Sunday.

Gus and Daisy were the table-setters.

Gus made the place cards (two for himself)

Daisy did the cute bunny napkin folds

We had our Easter Egg Hunt on Palm Sunday too, since we had cousins over

Abe and Malachi on the hunt

Is this a valid egg-hiding technique?

Baby Eve is getting so big!

And Jacob is a little man!

Monday we started our week-long Spring Cleaning. Appropriate, then, to talk about Jesus cleansing the temple that day. We went to the Lindon Temple Open House that night for Family Home Evening.

I am sorry to have to report that not everyone is pleasant and cheerful about cleaning every day. There are moments where we are…well, downright grumpy, I'm afraid! It is hard work, and the little kids often go around making new messes even as we're trying to clean up, and we get tired and it feels like we'll never be done. But I do think everyone is learning to feel at least a bit of satisfaction in a job well done as everything gets clean. Even Ziggy, bless him, was so proud of how clean and organized he and Daisy got all the bookshelves in the library!

To top it off, he found a long-lost toy Lamborghini behind some of the books on one of the shelves. Here he is re-enacting the great moment.

We had a couple days of beautiful snow falling. It's kind of fun to be inside working while the snow falls outside.

And not everyone cleaned as diligently as he should. This is Malachi's wastebasket in his room! Disgraceful! It should be some kind of terrible world record!

Bunny cookies

Tuesday we talked about Jesus teaching in parables.

The Lost Sheep (or bunny?)

The Lost Coin

The Ten Virgins

In the evenings we did Easter Week activities. I was disappointed in how much our "stained glass" from last year faded (last year we used Sharpie and filled in the spaces with UV resin) so we tried it again this year, using tinted epoxy resin instead. It took a little while to get the hang of how to fill the spaces without letting them overflow (though Junie used the overflow to make a kind of marbled effect, and that was really pretty), and you have to be careful not to get the epoxy resin on your skin. But, it worked really well! It looks like real stained glass and I love how our pictures turned out. So far, they haven't faded! We used these pictures and this resin (you mix the two compounds) and this pigment to color the resin.

Putting the washed, clean rugs back out in the living room

We got out the oil lamps for our Passover Dinner on Thursday

The Last Supper

Jesus dips the "sop" at the same time as Judas. That poor one-eared bunny is always Judas.

Passover Dinner

We didn't make many new Names of Christ this year, but Gus added this darling one, "the Lam of God."

We had this "crown of thorns" out all through the week. The kids got to take out a thorn every time they did something hard or made a sacrifice for someone else. (Abe, when he was home, complicated matters by trying to make people put a thorn back in every time they did something bad. Ha!)

Good Friday. The crucifixion.

The closed tomb

The veil of the temple rent in twain

Banana Splits after General Conference Saturday night. Goldie made all the ice cream again. Strawberry, chocolate, mint, and vanilla. Hot fudge and Hot caramel to go on top. Yum!