Our Week of Easter 2012

We are doing a Week of Easter Activities again this year and I'm posting a new post again because I think I'm going to change a few things and I want to remember what they are :) Since I already have last year's activities to work on I thought I could possibly add a bit more and improve on what we did last year.

Once again a couple of sites I got my information from for this are:
Sugar Doodle, Our Week Long Easter Experience Christianity Today, Easter Activities

The Pictures we'll be using are from the Gospel Art Book, put out by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The pictures can also be viewed and downloaded from the Church's website. All of the pictures we'll be using will be out of the New Testament section.

Sunday: Palm Sunday, Discuss Easter and Love for Each Other
Picture: Triumphal Entry
Scripture: Mark 11:1-10
Do an "LOA table" (Love One Another Table/Board/Wall). Set up an area where people can write compliments and notes to other members of the family that would then be shared out loud with everyone Easter Morning. I bought a large dry-erase board last year and we display it in the Living Room through out the week for people to write on it.

Here is our LOA Board from last year:

This was a lot of fun and the girls really enjoyed it, I'm hoping they like it as much this year! And this year Charity will be able to write on there by herself!

Monday: Color Easter Eggs for FHE, we color about 3 dozen since everyone loves to eat them except me!
Talk about meaning of Easter
Resurrection Eggs

Tuesday: Discuss Service & Easter
Picture: Jesus Washing Disciples Feet
Scripture: John 13:1-30
Discuss ways that Jesus served others and ways that others served Jesus. For Dinner have everyone serve someone else their dinner. After dinner discuss ways we can serve others. If I can come up with a good one we'll do a service project for someone else this night as well, maybe we'll take dinner to another family.

Wednesday: (refer to Sugardoodle link)
Picture: The Last Supper
Luke 22:13-15
We're going to have a supper that would have been served in Jesus time. Such as Raisins, unleavened bread, hard boiled eggs, berries, salad greens with vinegar dressing, olives, grape juice, and lamb if I can find it otherwise steak. We'll season it and marinate it with olive oil (1tbs), garlic (1 clove) and salt and pepper. We'll make a picnic out of it and use our fingers. I've really liked this meal in years past so I'm excited to be doing this again! (It will be our third year doing it!)

We didn't get to it last year but this year I really want for us to dress up in sheets and stuff for our picnic dinner tonight! The kids would have so much fun with that! :)

Unleavened Bread Recipe
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Combine in a bowl: 1 tsp salt and 1/2 tsp baking soda. Cut in 2 tablespoons of butter. Stir in 2/3 cup buttermilk. Mix in one egg and two cups flour. Using a rolling pin, roll dough into several pieces and roll out very thin on a floured board (if not rolled out thin, it will have the consistency of heavy bread). Lay sheet of dough on ungreased flat baking pans. Prick with a fork Cut into 4-inch squares with a sharp knife or pizza cutter. Bake 10-12 minutes or until lightly browned.

Thursday: Garden of Gethsemane and the Plan of Happiness
Picture: Garden of Gethsemane
Scripture: Mark 14:12-21
Jesus Died that we might live again, he suffered for our sins so we can be forgiven.

Friday: Discuss Jesus Sacrifice, the Crucifixion
Picture: The Crucifixion
Sripture: John 19
Make Edible Tombs, and have everyone share their favorite story about Jesus

Saturday: Did Jesus Really live again?
Picture: Burial of Jesus, Empty Tomb (this one is not in the Gospel Art Book, but we have it through a different set of pictures, Gospel Art Picture Kit #232)
Activity: Easter Story Cookies
Scripture: Luke 23:56

Sunday (Easter): Easter Baskets + Big Empty Easter Eggs and Discuss the Empty Tomb and eat our Easter Story Cookies and read together the LOA Board.
Pictures:  Empty Tomb (this one is not in the Gospel Art Book, but we have it through a different set of pictures, Gospel Art Picture Kit #232), Mary and the Resurrected Christ, Jesus Shows His Wounds

Resurrection Eggs

Each year I've had to look at other sites to put together the Resurrection Eggs for our Week of Easter. So I decided this year to go ahead and create my own post with the Resurrection Eggs we will be using. Some sites I used to create our eggs is Celebrating Easter: Resurrection Eggs, Rainbow Castle Resurrection Eggs, Resurrection Eggs, Creative Bible Study: Resurrection eggs,

Each of our eggs is a different color. I save these from year to year just replacing a few small things that won't save well. So, I've also included which color the egg is.

Our Resurrection Eggs

Egg #1 (Light Purple)
In Egg: Palm Branches (foam stickers from an Easter Set)
Message: Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. The people waved Palm Branches at him.
Scripture: Mather 21:1-11

Egg #2 (Orange)*
In Egg: Cotton Ball or Swatch of fabric with Perfume on it
Message: Mary anointed Jesus feet with perfume and washed them
Scripture: John 12:3

Egg #2 (Orange) Option 2*
In Egg: Swatch of cloth
Message: Jesus washed the disciples feet
Scripture: John 13:4-5

Egg #3 (Blue)
In Egg: "bread" (in our case a small toy piece of bread)
Message: Jesus shared the Last Supper with his disciples
Scripture: Mathew 26:17-19

Egg #4 (Green)
In egg: 3 dimes (for 30 pieces of silver)
Message: Judas Betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver
Scripture: Mathew 27:3

Egg #5 (Yellow)
In Egg: A cross (made from pipe cleaners)
Message: Jesus carried his own cross
Scripture: John 19:17

Egg #6 (Metallic Green)
In Egg: Branch with thorn on it
Message: Soldiers placed a crown of thorns on Jesus' head
Scripture: John 19:2

Egg #7 (Purple)
In Egg: A nail
Message: Jesus was nailed to the cross and pierced in the side
Scripture: John 19:18,37 John 20:25-29

Egg #8 (Bright Pink)
In Egg: A sign (small piece of paper written on with THE KING OF THE JEWS)
Message: They placed a sign above him saying This is the King of the Jews
Scripture: Luke 23:38

Egg #9 (Metallic Blue)
In Egg: A small sponge
Message: They gave Jesus vinegar with gall on a sponge to drink.
Scripture: Mathew 27:34

Egg #10 (Dark Pink)
In Egg: Spices
Message: Spices to prepare Jesus for Burial
Scripture: John 19:40

Egg #11 (Metallic Pink)
In Egg: A small rock
Message: A stone covered the tomb and was rolled away.
Scripture: John 20:1

Egg #12 (Dark Purple)
In Egg: Empty
Message: Jesus was not there for he had risen
Scripture: Mathew 28:6

* I'm unsure which of these 2 I want to do, maybe I'll do both and have 13 eggs or maybe I'll take out one of the others but I'm not sure which one I'd want to take out so we'll see.

Long Time No See

So, I knew it had been a long time since I last blogged, I didn't realize it had been 4 1/2 months! So much has happened since early November I'm not even sure where to start!

So, I'll try at the beginning and give you a short description of each month!

November - Thanksgiving of course, we took a family picture with Dennis' family. It was much needed the last one we'd taken was when Danielle was a baby! But we were missing 2 kids so it's still not complete! Maybe next time...

December - Charity had her winter ballet performance which was a part in The Nutcracker. Her class was Children of The Land of Sweets! It was so cute! And a lot of fun to watch! We got a DVD of it and she watches it quite frequently! Then, there was Christmas of course! We ended up going down to Arizona for Christmas at my twin's house and it was a lot of fun. On Christmas Eve we went over to the temple and can I just say it was cool to see Palm Trees and Grapefruit and Orange trees all lit up for Christmas! :) That's one thing I'd definitely have if we lived somewhere warm enough, lots of grapefruit trees! lol, the girls love them and so do I!

January - In January Dennis and I went to The Travel Expo here in Utah, it's big drawing point this year was cruises! Mainly Alaska cruises! And since that's what we were planning on doing for our Anniversary this year we went to get more information. We heard a lot we'd already found out through our research and we learned a lot we didn't, and before the month was out we had booked our Cruise! It's not for a lot more months but we are looking forward to it and having fun planning and getting ready! (We have to get passports!)

February - In February is Valentine's Day and we love Valentine's Day around here! There was balloons and good food and flowers. It was great! The girls got in on the fun and helped me with a Scavenger Hunt for Daddy and they helped him blow up balloons. We gave them big heart pillows, and Charity of course kidnapped ALL of my balloons and put them in her room! lol! We've still got a few bouncing around the house the end of March!

March - For the last several years in March I took the girls and went to Arizona for Laura's Spring Break but it wasn't in the cards this year. Charity is in Kindergarten now and our Spring Breaks don't match up and she would have missed a Ballet Practice for Giselle next month so we ended up letting Danielle go with Grandma and Granpda. Yes, she'd miss some preschool and a speech therapy session or two but she's 3 and still young enough to get to go do fun stuff like that! It'll be Rebecca's turn in a couple of years. And they promised Charity a week or two at their house this summer and she is looking forward to that so it all ended up nicely!

Oh, and today Rebecca is 18 months old! Where on earth has the time gone!?! It seems like just yesterday we brought her home from the hospital. Time has gone by so quickly, the family picture I have up on the wall is still the one from the day we blessed her! A very pretty picture I know but it's about time to update them! I guess I'm going to have to start watching for sales on pictures to get some more printed! Though I need to get pictures printed from the last few months anyway.

I got photo albums for each of the girls with a Teddy Bear and their named engraved on the front. So cute! I've almost got Charity's and Danielle's caught up on pictures but have yet to get any in Rebecca's so that is my current project. One day the girls are going to look back and love those! But once again, I'm worried I'm over doing the pictures, lol, but we have such easy access to pictures now a days it's hard not to document every one of life's moments in them!

Now, April is just about here with General Conference and Easter coming up after that! So, I am working on my plans for our week of Easter. I'm going to do stuff similar to what we did last year BUT the week leading up to Easter is also Spring Break so I might have to come up with some extra ideas, so we shall see! I'll try to be better about updating in the future and if there is anything else important that I think of to add that happened the last few months I will definitely update and let you know!