Easter Weekend

My kids are quietly creating play-dough sculptures and play-dough hair for Larry the Cucumber.  It is a day off in our house, the last day of our 4 day Easter weekend.  The celebrations were busy and hectic but enjoyable and fun all at the same time.  A day off  when good napping can take place will be very much welcomed in our household today!

We started our weekend by coloring three dozen eggs Friday evening.  I don't know what I was thinking, but I can guarantee you that there will be egg salad eaten in our house this week.    (Maybe some macaroni salad or tuna salad as well since I put eggs in both of those things too.) The eggs are so bright and cheerful looking!  I knew the kids would have fun dying the eggs, so why not make it worth our while, right?

I have to insert this story...On Friday afternoon I told Ava that we would be dying Easter eggs that evening.  She looked at me with saucer-sized eyes filled with horror and said, "Dying eggs?  Oh no!  We're not going to explode them, are we?"  She thought that "dying" meant that we were going to kill them.  It was everything I could do not to giggle as I explained this activity further.

On Saturday morning, we went to a birthday party for a little boy at church who turned 5.  He is probably Lukas' best friend here in Ohio, although, I'm not sure he'll ever give up on Hannah Rau being his best friend.  Hannah lives in NY, where we used to live, and even though we moved away from there two and a half years ago, Lukas still intends to marry her.  Ask him some time, and I'm sure he'll tell you that he is going to marry Hannah.  The only problem with this is that I'm not sure she knows anything about it. 

We had the coldest, shortest Easter egg hunt ever on Saturday evening followed by a cook-out at church.  There were so many, many people packed into our little church building trying to stay out of the cold.  Ava barely hunted for eggs in the 5 minutes that she was outside because she was too cold.  She kept complaining about the wind, which was also terrible.  It occurred to me yesterday that it was warmer here on Christmas than it was on Easter.  I don't ever remember that happening!

Easter is my favorite day of the year.  I love going to church and celebrating with other believers on Easter morning.  We had a phenomenal service yesterday that included lots of music, drama, video, a short sermon (of course), and a tattoo.  Yes, you read that correctly, there was a tattoo involved.  For those of you who are panicking right now as you read this, I'll go into the tattoo explanation in another blog.  It was an amazing service of celebration, and many people made commitments to the Lord.  I am so glad that we are part of a congregation that truly seeks to reach people where they are.

We hosted Easter dinner for Eric's side of the family yesterday.  I am glad to have opportunities like this now that we are local.  The only glitch was that the biscuits took twice as long to bake as they were supposed to, but everything else turned out great.  We had a very blessed time with our family. 

Please enjoy looking at the SMILEBOX that I have made.  There are many pictures of our Easter celebrations.  I would love to hear about each of your Easter weekends.  As I said, Easter is my favorite day of the year.  What better way is there to spend a weekend than celebrating the resurrection of our Lord?