Easter 2010

Holy Week

So, none of our Easter plans turned out like we planned. :-)

Artie's mom brought lunch over on Palm Sunday and we had a nice day together. She's such a wonderful cook. For Christmas she gave us all a coupon for a meal at Granny's Kitchen. This time she brought over fried chicken, roast and gravy, macaroni and cheese, fried okra, creamed corn, and homemade biscuits. I made some mashed potatoes to go with the gravy and it was all good. She topped it off with a lemon pound cake!! We watched the Gospel According to John and had a nice afternoon together. The children colored some pictures of Jesus riding in and palm branches. I think they all sent them home with Granny to go on her frig...

Terry's birthday was on Maudy Thursday this year, which was also April Fool's Day. I spent most of the day at school. First there was awards day for Terry's grade, then for Stephen, Bobby and Emily's. Stephen got the award for AB Honor Roll!! :-) I left quickly and picked up lunch for me and Terry from McDonald's and we had a nice time just the two of us in the teacher's lounge. Later in the afternoon I had it all arranged with the office and Terry was called in to the Principal's office. I was hiding in there with birthday balloons. Terry came in the office saying "Ya'll can't April Fool's me, I haven't done anything wrong and it's my birthday!!" He's only seven and I don't think I can fool him anymore!!! :-)

Thursday night we grilled out hamburgers and had cake and presents with the little children. Troy had to work so we saved his real birthday meal for Friday night. The only thing he wanted for his birthday was a gun. He got a rifle, a pistol, a holster, bandanna and handcuffs. They had a lot of fun. I have some pictures but I think they are lost on my new phone. We celebrated with dinner on Good Friday with all the brothers and sisters, Brian brought Lauren - it was so good to see them again, it's been too long. Daddy and Karen and Bobbie also came. We kinda overtook our section of Pizza Inn. I think Terry had a fun night.

We did manage to get our garden planted around Terry's birthday dinner. Artie worked half a day and then came home and we shopped and planted. (and finished after dinner with spot lights)

Here's our rundown of what all we planted:

10 cucumber plants

3 zucchini plants

4 cantaloupe plants

2 strawberry plants

rosemary

cilantro

thyme

9 spinach plants

9 romaine lettuce plants

a red bell pepper plant

a yellow bell pepper plant

a banana pepper plant

a cayenne pepper plant

9 broccoli

9 early girl tomatoes

9 celebrity tomatoes

9 homestead heirloom tomatoes

18 Rutgers tomatoes

1 cherry tomato

1 Roma tomato

1 patio tomato

2 blueberry plants

and many, many carrot seeds.

I would still like to squeeze in some more different types of lettuces when I see what kind of room I have left. There wasn't much to choose from when we were shopping. This is the biggest garden we've planted so far. Each year we try and do a little more. Last year's garden was such a bust with the drought, we are hoping for much better this year. Artie is very excited about it and has a new weeder. He is using it for his exercise and stress relief when he gets in from work.

Saturday we spent the day finishing up cleaning, grocery shopping and gathering and purchasing Easter clothes. Brenda and I had a fun afternoon shopping.

Easter was lovely at church. That has to be my very favorite day of all. As much as I love our church I still miss hearing Robbie Dismukes singing He's Alive!!! That is my very favorite Easter song and singer!!!

The children were riding bikes when we came in from church and we were getting lunch ready. Bobby and Terry went a little farther than they were suppose to be riding and Bobby had a bike wreck with a car. Everyone in the neighborhood went running to him. It was terrifying until we saw Bobby walking up the road pushing his bike. The car did actually run over his foot - he had tire prints on his ankle but God is so good he wasn't even hurt. Within the hour he was running through OUR YARD - AWAY FROM THE CARS!!!! I on the other hand, nearly had a nervous breakdown!!!! I took a nice nap after lunch and tried to recoup....

My uncle Jackie (Daddy's brother) fighting the last stages of cancer and we have been planning much around his hospital and hospice stay. I was able to visit him last week and Artie and I went Monday night. I missed having lunch with our whole family on Easter as I am sure he did too. The hospice house he is staying in is very nice.

Lent and Holy Week

We began Lent this year using this coloring page.

I am working on our Holy Week plans for this year.

Here are some ideas I'm planning

Palm Sunday - Hearts of Palm Dip

Good Friday - Liturgical Tea

Holy Saturday - Resurrection Cookies

Easter Sunday - Resurrection Rolls

The Triumphal Entry Coloring Page

Hosanna Coloring Page

Resurrection Eggs

Easter Day

Our family
The children The boys
The girls
Me and Artie

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...