The Easter Bunny had a little bit of a time this year. We were camped on a 12 by 12 patch of dirt surrounded by tons of other people… making the traditional Easter Egg and basket hunt a little bit tricky. But lucky for us that bunny is pretty smart. He left some candy and small toy for each kid in a grocery sack at the foot of their tent (except for Josh’s for some inexplicable reason he hid Josh’s in the van). He also left a note with instructions for the parents to hide all the eggs he had left somewhere in Arches while they were hiking that day… So that’s just what we did.
We went on a brief hike around this beautiful structure (Balanced Rock, which looks serendipitously like an Easter Egg) while Ian hid all the eggs. Melissa remarked that the scenery reminded her of Jerusalem (not that either one of us has every been there). With the desert landscape… I could almost imagine myself there.
When we got back the excitement was palpable. We sent them off to each find 11 eggs. There were screams of excitement and a surprisingly lot of tears. Camping for two days makes everything more emotional I think. There were tears when they weren’t fast enough to get the egg that they wanted, tears when it wasn’t full of what they wanted, and frustration when they couldn’t find all 11. In general though it was a success. A very very windy success.
After the emotional egg hunt. We had all the kids put their eggs in the car so there wouldn’t be any distractions and we did the scavenger hunt that I found here. We did each item one by one. The kids found something on the list, we would read the scripture, look at a picture and talk about the symbolism of it. The kids were really receptive and it felt cleansing almost to do something more geared toward the Savior on Easter Sunday. In hindsight I would have picked my favorites/most important ones to do instead of all of them. We were definitely losing some of the younger ones by the end. I think at least a few words of our testimony got through to a couple of them though. It was uplifting and there were no tears of frustration. The difference between the fun aspect of Easter and the spiritual aspect of Easter were very marked for me this year. It was obvious which one brings more lasting joy.
Anna was on a mission all weekend to find her own secret hideout. She finally found it in this magical tree. The outfit is an Anna orginal.
I am usually terrible about making Easter as spiritual as it should be. It always creeps up on me… I honestly don’t usually know when it is until a week or so before, since it changes every year. But this year I wanted to be ready. I’ve had the top of my piano like this since Christmas time… and I don’t think I will change it anytime soon. Those pictures and words ground me.
I also found this idea here, added pictures to it, and hung them all up in my entryway hallway right at Max’s eye level. We didn’t get to it everyday, but I caught each one of my children looking at the pictures and reading the words at different points in the week.
I am so grateful that He Lives! I am so blessed that I have a testimony of that marvelous fact and I hope I did a better job of conveying that to my children this year.