Easter Week

A few years ago we started a new Easter tradition that my sister Sara found and shared with me. " A Christ Centered Easter" is a book written by Joe and Janet Hales and it has a great forward about the importance of Easter and reflecting on the life of the Savior- His final week, and his greatest gift of Love- the atonement and then the resurrection.   The book has ideas for families with children of all ages of ways to learn and celebrate the resurrection through mini lessons, activities and stories.  I love this book and I love having this tradition for our family.  During the week leading up to Easter we take a minute each day - doing activities, reading scriptures, learning and trying to live like the Savior did.  We started the week by putting out a jar that we planned to "fill" with acts of service and love.

We watched all week for ways that we were serving each other- when we saw a good deed or someone showing love we wrote about it on a strip of paper and placed it into a plastic egg- filling our jar.  At the end of the week we left the jar full of eggs out for the Easter bunny to hide and then we took time on Easter Sunday to read about all the service that we had been up to all week.  Evan, Eli and Gabe loved to be on the lookout during the week and tried extra hard to give lots of service so that we can fill the jar.  The good deeds and service that we did brought  so much love into our home and really made the week fun!

Another thing that we did towards the beginning of the week when we talked about the life of the Savior was to list His attributes and then as a family we picked one attribute of the Savior that we wanted to try to emulate that week.  This year  we chose to try be unselfish.  We made a poster to display in the kitchen to remind us of our goal through out the week.

We read about the Saviors last week... His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the last supper and Gethsemane.  we talked about the importance of those last days before He was crucified,  His teachings and His perfect love.  One evening we made bird nests and talked about Spring time and all the new life that comes with Spring.  We compared that to the re birth that we can have through repentance because of the atonement

On Saturday evening the boys all slept together upstairs in Gabe's room.  Then Sunday morning they all came into our room and climbed in bed with us.  They were so excited to see if the Easter bunny had come but we took a minute first as we laid there to talk about that first Easter morning when the stone was rolled away from the tomb and what it must have been like for Mary Magdalene to see the resurrected Savior. It was such a great week and a pretty special way to start our Easter Sunday and General Conference weekend.