Easter Activities

Easter is the holiday that we celebrate with all the kids and grandkids. We have a few traditions that we cling to: strawberry shortcake for Easter dinner, celebrating two of the grandsons' birthdays (they are born in April), going to church on Easter Sunday, having a Jerusalem dinner, and hiding plastic eggs.

Let me explain about the last two traditions:
Hiding plastic eggs - Candy and the Easter Bunny have never been a big part of our Easter celebration. We get some candy, but we don't load up on chocolate rabbits and Easter baskets overflowing with all sorts of chocolate and sugar. We try to make things more healthy and more focused on the reason for Easter. Several years ago, I read about a great tradition that I wanted to incorporate into our celebration. So I bought a bunch of plastic eggs (I bought more this year because the grandkids are getting faster at finding them),

and printed a bunch of small pictures about the Savior and his life.

Then I put 3 or 4 pieces of candy (some Easter-colored M&Ms and robin's eggs - the little malted milk filled candies), in the plastic eggs and a small picture.

These pictures are mostly of the Savior, but we also include pictures of our prophet, temples, Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, and other things that will remind the children of the sacred nature of Easter. As they open their eggs to see what is inside, they take a minute to look at the picture. The parents ask them what is in their picture, what it represents, or why it is important. As the children get older, we ask them what it means to them.

There is also one special egg hidden every year (it's gold), and each child is eager to find it.

This egg contains no candy. It is special because it is empty. After all of the eggs have been opened, we talk about the empty egg and compare it to the empty tomb that held Christ’s body for three days. We emphasize the importance of the Resurrection and of what the empty tomb means for each of us today.

The grandchildren look forward to this tradition for weeks. When they come to our house in the weeks before Easter, they always check to see if I have the eggs filled (but they don't look inside) and if I still have the golden egg.

The other tradition that we enjoy is our Jerusalem dinner. We have this dinner on Saturday night after we celebrate the birthdays. What did children eat that were growing up around the time of Jesus? What kind of utensils and dishes did they have? What did the children play and what work did they have to do?

So we spread a big cloth on the floor, gather a bunch of pillows, and have dinner Jerusalem-style. We have grape juice, because Jesus blessed the wine at the Last Supper. We have flat bread cooked on the grill to remind us of the bread he broke and blessed. We have lentil soup because lentils were a staple of that time. We also have olives, and dried fruits - figs and dates - and goat cheese because that was probably the kind of cheese they ate. Goat cheese is not our favorite, but that's ok. It's not bad with the figs and dates.

The next day, we have Easter breakfast rolls (they're hollow) and hard boiled eggs for breakfast. We have ham, potatoes, hot cross buns, and, of course, strawberry shortcake for dinner after church. I'll write about those next week.

Other random things:
We are going to raise chickens, so we got 25 of the cutest little balls of fluff. I'll let you know how that experiment goes.

2 days old

6 days old

And I made 4 separate batches (enough to give each family a big bag) of marshmallows

(see http://kim-cheyennefood.blogspot.com/2011/10/hot-chocolate-and-marshmallows.html).

I colored each batch a different color for Easter: pink, purple, yellow, and blue.

If you try this, put the food coloring in at the first after the gelatin is softened and when you add the hot sugar mixture. Use more food coloring than you think you'll need. As you whip the marshmallow mixture, it gets progressively more pastel. You can add more food color when you add the vanilla or whatever flavoring you use. And they melt really pretty in hot chocolate. And it's still ok to drink hot chocolate at Easter even if it is springtime.

Happy Easter!