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.

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Holy Week and Easter

I like the fact that Holy Week is becoming more widely celebrated in our church (though I suppose as individuals, there were lots of people doing that already—we have been trying to establish Holy Week traditions for over 10 years now). My mother-in-law was on the church Family Home Evening committee when Sam was young in the 1980s, and when she came up with some Easter Week FHE lesson plans, she was told "No—those make it seem too much like we're celebrating Holy Week!" Ha! I wonder why whoever it was was so bothered by that?

Unfortunately, it is hard to celebrate Eastertide "on the same level" as Christmastide when the world around us goes on busy as ever! Right before Christmas, it seems like "public" things slow down in recognition of family parties and so forth. But for Easter week, if we wanted to do anything together as a family, the kids (and me!) had to say no to a bunch of other things. Well, that's okay. We did it. And we had fun together.

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Easter!

Hooray for Easter, my favorite holiday! This Easter seemed particularly joyful because, after the longest winter ever, it finally felt like Spring. It was warm and sunny and beautiful. With General Conference the weekend before, and then a week of cleaning and preparation during Holy Week, Easter served as the culmination. Hallelujah; Christ is risen!

Here is Jesus preaching to the bunnies during Holy Week. Look how they love Him! He's going to heal that bunny with the broken ear, I think!

We did something new this year. A couple weeks before Easter, we had a Family Home Evening where we chose names of Christ to draw or write. It was so much fun! We all enjoyed it so much that we made multiple names and kept making them for the next few days! (Well…all of us except Malachi and Seb…but at least they did one each, ha ha). We hung all of our names up on the wall and they reminded us of Jesus and our love for Him all week long. So far, we can't bear to take them down!

The morning after we got our names of Christ hung on the wall, I discovered another one had been carefully written and added by Ziggy. I love it so much!!!

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A rosy Easter

Easter is always so nice. Bless Old Navy for making matching dresses for Big and Baby Girls! And bless Target for Bunny Sweaters. Some people asked me if I had made the dresses. Heavens no! Wouldn't that be lovely if I had or could, though?

I love the bunnies I've been collecting over the years. Coincidentally, these bunnies stayed in place and did not arrange themselves in impossibly precarious towering formations this year. It can't have anything to do with Abe being gone, can it? Surely not. Also, a lady in my ward was over at my house and admiring these bunnies. She said, "I love bunnies, but my husband would never let me have so many." It had not occurred to me that anyone would ever NOT like so many, but I guess I should add it to the list of things I'm grateful for about Sam! Bunny Tolerance.

These mossy bunnies are so sweet, too.

And this fluffy wreath, which is a Christmas wreath, but looks so Eastery, we use it for both!

For our Passover Dinner on the Thursday night, I usually try to do a simplified Seder plate of some sort, and make something semi-Middle-Eastern, and lamb if I can manage it. I couldn't manage it this year, so we got takeout from an Indian place—lamb coconut kurma—and I made tzatziki to go with it. It was SO good I wonder if we'll ever do it any other way again?

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Easter

You probably know Easter is my favorite holiday. And this year's Easter was extra good because we had beautiful weather AND General Conference. It was almost too much goodness on one day! The girls still wanted matching dresses (every year I wonder if this is the last year they'll like it?), the daffodils were in full bloom, and the flowering pear blossoms, which had been hesitating, decided to open up just for the occasion.

We haven't managed to find time for dyeing Easter eggs for the last few years now (those days before Easter always seem to be so busy!) but the kids love it, so they were very pleased to help get out the food coloring and measure out the drops this time. I think the eggs turned out quite beautifully!

And then we had real eggs for our traditional backyard egg hunt!

Much to my joy, (most of) the older boys consented to join the egg hunt. That made everyone else extra excited and happy too.

Look high and look low!

Gus found a big basketball-egg.

It wasn't cold. Ziggy just always wants to wear his coat.

Also, his pants are too big so he was constantly pulling them up.

Speaking of ill-fitting clothing, I do wish for the sake of these pictures that Gus was dressed in some adorable Easter outfit featuring bunnies, like he was last year (look at that tiny wee thing!). But the truth is…this is much closer to what he looks like most days. For some reason every time anyone puts pants on him they end up falling (or being taken!) off, or else the snaps of his onesies are flapping open indecently. So here he is in all his frog shirt, diaper, squishy-legged glory. He didn't seem to mind the hard ground or the poky grass on his bare feet. He was just happy to be running around outside with everyone else.

Oh, Goldie. She always runs towards me like she's Millie in "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" singing Wonderful, Wonderful Day. "You came out of nowhere; walking through the door, looking straight my way…"

Malachi taking the opportunity for a moment of meditation.

Gussie got some bubbles in his Easter basket and all his siblings were only too willing to entertain him with them.

I like the way he makes sympathetic blowing motions with his lips.

Of course we brought Nutmeg outside to hunt for eggs with us. It was only right that he enjoy the beautiful weather! You can see Gussie watching eagerly for his chance to grab the bunny…

…which came soon enough! Nutmeg is such a patient bunny. He lets Gus catch him sometimes and stroke him a bit. But he is quite capable of getting away when he wants to!

So Gus spent most of his time very happily chasing after the just-out-of-reach bunny. Look at those chubby little legs run!

This does not bode well. Luckily the hose was not hooked up to the water.

What on earth is Goldie doing back there?

Well, all in all—eggs, bunnies, dresses, conference, and chubby legs—it was a very nice day.

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