I realize that posting about our Easter activities is rather anticlimatic, but I had hoped to have the book I’m reading finished in time to review it for the I Read It! carnival at 5 Minutes for Books.  Since I’m still working on the book, I thought I’d share a few of the things we did while I was on my bloggy hiatus.  Mostly, this is for my own future recollection.  I’m notorious for starting “traditions” and then failing to remember to do them the next year. 

First of all, the biggest thing we did was spend a whole lot of time at our church.  Our church produces a huge Easter drama each year, which is essentially the Passion of Christ.  I serve as the narrator and Steady Eddie plays the Apostle Thomas.  We spend part of the week prior to Palm Sunday weekend in dress rehearsals, and then we go live on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights of Palm Sunday weekend and Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights of Easter weekend.  The program is long–about  2 1/2 to 3 hours–and it is tiring (especially when you’re 30+ weeks pregnant!), but it is very worthwhile.  It is the largest evangelistic outreach our church does each year, and each year usually results in 150-200 people making decisions to follow Christ.  Please pray that these new converts will find root and depth in Christ and not fall away.

As far as our homeschooling and family life are concerned, I tried to focus on Jesus and His sacrifice the week leading up to Easter.  The week before Palm Sunday, we enjoyed quite a few non-religious Easter stories .  After Palm Sunday, though, it was all about Jesus.  Our main resource for this was Benjamin’s Box and Resurrection Eggs.  I know I’ve said it before, but this was a HUGE hit with my children.  I don’t think I’ll have a hard time remembering to keep this tradition. 

On Monday of last week, we kicked the week off by having a reading Easter egg hunt.  I typed out some review sentences (from The Ordinary Parents’ Guide to Teaching Reading) for Lulu and some words for Louise to read and stuffed them into plastic eggs.  They found the eggs in record time, and coming inside to read their sentence strips was way more fun than merely sitting down to read them off the white board, our normal modus operandi.  Why don’t I do things like this more often? (For the observant, yes, Louise does have her pants on backwards.  I don’t know why.  That girl has a mind of her own about most things.  That day was particularly cool and windy, and Louise was still getting over a cough, so the hats were a must.)

The Thursday before Easter, I had planned to do some Easter-related baking.  By this, I mean I wanted to bake something traditional for Easter.  I was contemplating pretzels or hot cross buns, but then I read this post over at Tammy’s Recipes about homemade matzah.   This was a rather fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants venture, but Tammy’s pronouncement that this recipes requires only six ingredients sold me.  Although we didn’t specifically focus on the Passover aspect of Easter this year, it worked out nicely because we just read about the Passover a few weeks ago in our Bible story book.  This was fresh on the girls’ minds, so it was easy to make the connection.  Of course, the girls LOVED baking the unleavened bread, and eating it wasn’t too bad, either. 

On Friday, Steady Eddie had the day off.  It was the eagerly anticipated egg dyeing day for the girls, so dye eggs we did.  The girls had a great time, and I’m learning to just let go and let them create.  It feels good. 

I also spent a portion of the day on Friday and Saturday baking in preparation for Sunday.  My family came over for Sunday dinner (mostly provided by my mom), so I baked this lovely strawberry cake for the first time in honor of Easter.  I’ve learned that PW‘s recipes are pretty reliable, but I actually have few qualms about experimenting on my family with new recipes anyway.  I ended up not being able to follow the recipe exactly because I didn’t have the proper sized cake pans, but it turned out to be delicious, anyway. 

On Saturday my main objectiveas were to frost the strawberry cake, make homemade cinnamon rolls, and rest in preparation for the night’s Easter drama performance.  All this after two soccer games in the morning and a shopping trip.  It was a busy, productive, exhausting day. 

Sunday morning, I still wanted to do something meaningful with the girls in honor of Easter.  The busy-ness of the previous two days had disrupted our daily rhythm (which is fairly gentle and peaceful, I might add), and I wanted to try to get the focus back.   I had read over at The Homespun Heart about Resurrection Biscuits, so I thought we’d give them a try.  The girls enjoyed making and eating these, and while I think it’s fairly redundant (not to mention unhealthy) to bake these the same morning that you’re planning to have homemade cinnamon rolls during Sunday School, I think the message behind the biscuits made sense to the girls. 

Sunday School and the worship service at church both focused on Luke 24–I love it when the texts are Spirit-orchestrated so perfectly.  It was a lovely service. 

After the service, we came home and enjoyed ham, potato salad, baked beans, rolls, deviled eggs, and the aforementioned strawberry cake with my mother and my sister and her family.  The girls and I finished up our hunting of the Resurrection Eggs and our reading of Benjamin’s Box with my 10 and 11 year old nephews before lunch, and the boys seemed to enjoy it as much as we did.  After lunch, the children hunted their dyed eggs, and then it was off to rest/nap/read for everyone for the next couple of hours.  Sunday night was the final performance of the Easter drama at church, and it all came off beautifully, with many people responding to the Gospel.

And so ends our marathon Easter weekend.  Sometimes I wish I weren’t so busy during this season of the year.  I truly love Easter and wish I could focus on quieting myself and reveling in it more.  Then again, I love being a part of our church’s drama because it is such a great evangelistic tool.  I feel like I’m doing something God has gifted me to do when I serve as the narrator.  Nothing worthwhile comes without a price, for sure.  I hope next year I can plan ahead a little better (‘though I have no idea what to truly expect with a new baby in the house!) and make things a little more peaceful and contemplative.