Easter

Happy Resurrection Day!

Easter seemed a lot more like "Easter" this year for me.  Since Sunday school last week Elias has sporadically yelled out "Jesus is Alive!" which was a joyous reminder of what we celebrate.  I fasted Good Friday and had the day off work.  On Friday I made it a point of reading the Easter stories in his Bible to Elias, which he normally neglects in favor of stories from the Old Testament.  It certainly caught his attention this time around, though, and since then he's been asking that I read the "Jesus ouch" story again and again (which I make sure to follow with the "Jesus rose from the dead" story.)  It's a hard thing to present to a 3 year old--heck, it's hard to grasp for anyone!  Yet so awesomely true.  Makes all the difference in the world.  So I guess it's just the power and love and importance of it that I want to convey.

In contrast to last year, Elias had fun dying eggs and going on egg hunts.  I made a nice Easter basket for him earlier in the week and hid it up high in a bag in the basement, but despite my efforts he found it and presented it to me early Saturday morning with much excitment ("I found a basket of treats, Mommy!")--although he didn't partake, awaiting my permission, so it survived until today.  This morning he actually slept in, allowing me to hide the dyed, hard-boiled eggs we'd made in the living room just in time.  The first one he found he promptly set out to peel off the shell, but the rest survived and were all accounted for. 

We had a big breakfast and made it to church early(!), dressed in our best.  I tried to take a picture of us using the camera timer, which worked OK, although Elias tended to run towards it, excited by the beeps and flashing lights.  At church several people commented on his clothes or how nice he looked, to which he always replied "yes."

After church we came home.  He didn't want to change out of his nice clothes, so we played outside a bit all dressed up.  We had another Easter egg hunt (this time with plastic eggs filled with candy and the basket treats) and played with the chickens, while I set out to get more picures.

OK, here he is definitely fed up with the picture-taking!  (His cheeks are all big because his mouth is full of the peanut M&Ms I ended up bribing him with to get him to sit by the daffodils!)