Our family's Easter

We had a beautiful Easter this year. I think it all stems from learning about the liturgical year - mostly from Dawn's blog .

We began our week on Monday with our Spring Cleaning - we still have a long ways to go with that and are dedicating Mondays throughout Spring to work on that task.

Midweek we learned of Spy Wednesday and Judas' plans for betrayal. We began watching The Gospel of John DVD. I had never seen this movie before and totally loved it. It was pretty much word for word taken from the book of John. It was a beautiful portrayal of Jesus. We watched the whole movie from the creation of the world through God's voice to the part where Judas goes to seek to profit from betraying Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. We stopped the movie right there and continued to story from there on out day to day in the order it occurred. We finished off the night with "silver dollar" pancakes - remembering how Jesus' disciple turned on him - how He faced the same sort of trials we face even today.

Thursday we had great plans, but they all seemed to fall to the wayside. Troy had a doctor's appointment that morning and then we stopped by Aldi's while we were on that side of town and somehow the rest of the school day ended up lost!!!

Friday we redeemed the time. Artie was off for Good Friday and joined in our studies. We started with the events that happened on Thursday - the Lord's Supper, in the garden, the soldiers arrest. We stopped right there and talked about what had taken place (remember the kids ages go from 4 to 15, so there is much review to make sure the littles are up to speed with everything). After we talked, we had our own Lord's Supper - a beautiful family time. We followed up with the events from Friday - Jesus being crucified - We stopped the movie while he was on the cross - trying to show the children it wasn't just a quick thing - as time went on - we would ask the little children - where is Jesus now - He's still on the cross...

My grandparents stopped by a visit right as we turned the movie off. It was a nice surprise. Everyone had to show there own special things to Mimi and Grandy - from wrestling moves to cartwheels and backbend kickovers.

After they left, we ate lunch and then watched the rest of the movie up to Jesus being place in the tomb. All through Saturday - the same question - where is Jesus now - He's in the tomb still.... but tomorrow he won't be.

Sunday was beautiful. We woke and went to church together. We fill up our pew~~ imagine that!! We went to Sunday school also. After church we finished the movie - witnessing Jesus resurrection!!! We talked about he fact that Easter-tide is a season and how Jesus didn't automatically rise up to heaven - he still walked the earth for days and had teachings to give us. We will follow up the next weeks looking over what He had to teach. We had a nice lunch - a picnic ham, cheese potatoes, green beans and whole potatoes, macaroni and cheese, crescent rolls, followed by Easter baskets with some goodies for all and finished up the day with some Easter egg hunting.

I think the was the best year of keeping our focus on Jesus and teaching the kids what it was all about. We didn't "deprive" them of Easter egg hunts or all the goodies, but that wasn't the main focus and everyone loved learning more and more of Jesus. Troy even said, I've heard about Jesus and Easter all my life, but didn't realize that he still walked the earth after his crucifixion - I thought He was only here for about 4 more hours. It's so fun to see we still have so much to learn.

Hopefully I will get some pictures up later...