A Different Easter

This year our Easter was quite a bit different. I've been trying to work on traditions that seem to celebrate Easter. I saw this sheep at Target and thought the design of it was so cool I had to buy it. I told Michael it's my duty to support good design (if I had any picture taking skills you would see that he actually is pretty awesome). I decided he could be our Easter sheep and only come out at Easter time. When the kids woke up Sunday, he was sitting on the couch. They asked about him and I told them that he had a story. Kynlee said very energetically, "Oh, you mean the one about the guy that cut off all the arms protecting the sheep?"

Uh, no, not quite the Easter story I was looking for...



So this year's sheep story was the Parable of the Lost Sheep. Ander and Easton played the roll of the 99 sheep, and Kynlee was the shepherd looking for the lost sheep. She affectionately carried him back home on her shoulders. They love him and have named him Sheepy.

I saw some cute wiggly wooden fish at the store a few weeks before Easter and thought they could definitely tie in with the holiday. I bought a bunch to do with the cousins, but the schedules didn't work out so we just painted as many as we wanted. I told them the story of Christ telling the fishermen, Peter and Andrew to follow him and become fishers of men.





Ander wants to do everything we do, he even seemed to stop painting and look at me so I could take his picture, kind-of made me chuckle.



Bless all the little fishies, even the red belly piranha Kynlee wanted to paint.



Because of some things going on, we had an unplanned family fast Sunday. We told the kids the night before we would be fasting. They wanted to do it too, although I knew about three hours into it they would max out. We just encouraged them not to eat any extra things like treats. I decided it would be pointless to tempt them with Easter baskets in the morning. I never said anything, and they seemed to never think about it.

This next tradition has been in the works for a few years. One year, I decided that teaching the kids to be disciples of Christ on Easter would be a good tradition. For a week we marked down all the good things they did. My younger sister was thinking about that idea during a lesson on the Parable of the Ten Virgins. She thought it would be neat if each person could add oil to their own lamp for each good deed. Last year I got the lamps, but didn't get around to the oil-- bad virgin. This year we got to burn them. The kids thought it was the coolest thing.



It was a little strange not to have big meals and tasty treats, and the day seemed to quietly go by, but it was a nice different. I'm not sure how much the kids were able to apply the stories, but maybe on down the road they'll figure it out.