Happy Easter!

Brrrr! What happened to our beautiful spring weather? The past few days have been down right cold. Yuck. We had to bundle the kids up in layers under their fleece-lined windbreakers to go out for the egg hunt yesterday. As you can see, although our neighborhood has considerably fewer houses than our last one, there are still a LOT of kids!
Enza (one of our neighbors originally from NY) put a lot of effort into planning and orchestrating the event for the kids. They each got a little bunny basket to collect their eggs, and each child got 25 eggs! They were thrilled, but I was a bit less thrilled about bringing 75 (!) more eggs into my house. If she does this again next year,
I'm going to donate all these extra eggs towards the effort. This Type-A mommy can not tolerate having hundreds of plastic eggs underfoot when the Easter stuff comes out each year. The 60 eggs that we had was already excessive to me. After all, while this part of Easter is fun, it is NOT what Easter is about. This morning, before heading
downstairs to find the eggs hidden around our house, I sat down with the kids and we talked about why we celebrate Easter, and why the eggs are a symbol for Easter (they symbolize new life, just as Jesus' dying for us, and rising again on Easter is how we can have new life in Him). I also read them the "Jelly Bean Prayer"
RED IS FOR THE BLOOD HE GAVE.

GREEN IS FOR THE GRASS HE MADE.
YELLOW IS FOR THE SUN SO BRIGHT.
ORANGE IS FOR THE EDGE OF NIGHT.
BLACK IS FOR THE SINS WE MADE.
WHITE IS FOR THE GRACE HE GAVE.
PURPLE IS FOR HIS HOUR OF SORROW.
PINK IS FOR OUR NEW TOMORROW.
I hope that you have a blessed Easter, and that you have embraced the message of new life in Christ.