Simply Easter

The way holidays are celebrated in our culture is getting quite ridiculous. From the bombardment of advertising in everything we see and hear, to the pressure of measuring up to our Pinterest perfect friends, to our cultural obsession with excess and over-the-top E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G. It's stressful. It's expensive. It's exhausting. And in the end, it's fruitless.

What if I told you that my holidays are easy, cheap, relaxing and fulfilling?

Let's go back to the basics. Here's the definition of a holiday: a day of festivity or recreation when no work is done. Is that what your holidays feel like?  While we're stressing out to make our Jesus holidays super-amazing-awesomer-than-has-ever-been-done-before, Jesus says this...

"Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." -Matthew 11:28-30

I like His style. So I'm following it. It's simple ya'll, strip it all down to the core- Jesus.

We see a holiday and apparently it's in our nature to add to it, make it bigger and better, always fighting to outdo ourselves and not be outdone by our neighbors.

But a fair warning:  when we begin to add anything to Jesus, well, is it still Jesus we're worshipping and celebrating?  Is He not fun enough? Cool enough?  Magical enough?

The Jesus of the Bible loves kids. He said we should all have the faith of little children. Now that's fun!

"But Jesus called them to him, saying, “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God.  Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” Luke 18:16-17

The Jesus of the Bible was a rebel.  He turned the social norm upside down, tossing tables, eating with sinners and fighting for the outcasts of society.  That's pretty cool.

"And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons." Matthew 21:12

" And as he reclined at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who followed him." Mark 2:15

 "And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.”" John 8:7

The Jesus of the Bible performed miracle after miracle and defeated death. That's better than any magic trick! It's miraculous, and it's a gift to be celebrated.

 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." John 3:16-17

Perhaps the real issue we have, the reason we want to add so much to Jesus, is because we don't know Him as well as we should. He is enough. Just Jesus.

I'm not claiming to have it all figured out. I screw up every single day, usually hourly. But I've seen the change in my family and myself as we've simplified things and made much of Jesus. My girls are only two years old, but they know who Jesus is and love reading His stories. He is exciting to them. We get excited about Jesus, so our kids do, too. They learn from our example. So we have to ask ourselves: What is our example teaching them?

Our Easter was beautifully simple this year.

We woke up and untaped our oven to eat our resurrection cookies. They were super easy and quick to make. (Even this non-cook here had all the ingredients already in her pantry!) A very cool idea, but with the girls so young we just simplified it to taping the oven, then unsealing it in the morning and eating our empty tomb cookies. Here's the recipe and script that I found.

We got ready, and went to church.  Eriek and I served in the service following the one we attended, while my parents took the kids home for lunch and quality time.

After naps, we hunted eggs. Although Zoe loved finding them, she kept giving them to Arella, who gladly accepted the extras.

But when we opened the eggs, we used this great idea for resurrection eggs for toddlers.

In the first egg, place a bread crumb.  We used a Wheat Thin.
Jesus ate dinner with his friends.  Luke 22:14-15

In the second egg, place a cross (we just used stickers we had).
The next day Jesus died on the cross.  John 19:17-18

In the third egg, place a strip of cloth (we used a piece of tissue).
He was wrapped in cloth and placed in a tomb.  John 19:40

For the fourth egg, go outside and pick out the coolest rock you can find.
A stone was placed in front of the tomb.  Matthew 27:59-60

Leave the fifth egg empty.
Jesus’ friends came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been moved.
The tomb was empty!  Luke 24:1-3

Fill the sixth and final egg with a sweet treat (we used M&Ms).
Jesus is alive!  That’s the sweet surprise of Easter.  Matthew 28:5-6

Ya'll I spent less than $5, including the baskets I bought last year for $1 each.  It took 5 minutes to put together, well, once I got those plastic eggs opened. And the girls LOVED it and were excited to see and hear what was in the next egg. My mom threw one of our favorite crockpot recipes together, and we all had a fun, laid back, easy dinner enjoying each other.

Even two days later, Arella was pointing out Jesus' empty tomb in her Bibles, and Zoe drew a circle and told me happily it was a rock.  When I asked her if that was the rock rolled away from Jesus' tomb, she got very excited and said, "Yes it is!"

We don't have to dress up Jesus. He is ENOUGH.

Easter Fun

Yeah I know I'm a week late, but I still wanted to post pics of my cutie patooties from Easter.  So let the photo bomb begin...

I had to lead with Nana.  If we are Facebook friends, you may have seen her holding and pointing a rifle next to her walker while wearing a camo vest and Christmas tree hat, or perhaps you saw her in action in the great walker race of 2012 against Arella.  Nana is 95, queen of the nursing home and quite the character.  My mom and I think she should have a reality tv series called "Rest Home Wars."  She broke out the sparkly bunny ears to earn points with Zoe and Arella.  It worked briefly.

After church and a nap we went to Mimi & Pops house to hang out with family.  Zoe was cleaning dishes in her play kitchen while Arella played dj for us with the sit-n-spin music.  

After the warm up play time they were ready for their very first egg hunt!  Arella wasn't walking at this time last year, so it was pretty cool they got to experience a "first" together.  They watched through the window as we hid the eggs outside.  Arella was eager to hunt the eggs, Zoe was very content to show me her pretty basket.

When we opened the door, it was like a gun went off in a race as they both darted outside in a blur of pink sandals and baskets.

Arella was so excited to get to the eggs but kept stopping, trying to open each one as she picked it up.

This gave Zoe a chance to catch up, and she caught on quick without any help!

I love how "hiding" at this age requires placement out in the open, guidance from the adults on the sidelines, and occasionally some refereeing and explaining that eggs in their sister's basket are off limits.

She kept counting, "One, two, one, two..." until all eggs were counted.  She got two.

See?  Two.

Zoe can only count to one so I guess Arella won the hunt.

I filled their little eggs with stickers and they used them to decorate crosses I cut out of construction paper.  Then they colored the crosses and turned them into little masterpieces.  All the while we got to talk about Jesus and the cross.  Arella loves to point out the crosses in our house now!

A little musical entertainment followed.

 And of course giving knuckles to Great Uncle Jim and a little putting action caps off an awesome Easter!

Arella's Room

Many of you know I started working on Arella's room back in February, and I have yet to post pics. Well, I finally took pictures and had a few minutes to get them on my computer

Everything is hand painted except the verse on the wall is a vinyl sticker.  I'm tickled every time we change Arella's diaper because she loves to stare at her little monkey and even reaches out for it and smiles at it!  That makes all the time and effort worth it!!!  Enjoy...

 

 

Jonah- As Told by Stuffed Animals

Eriek had to come up with a big final project for his class this semester.  He decided to get creative this time and make a children's book of Jonah using our stuffed animals as the main cast.  He wrote a script out and then started envisioning what pictures he needed.

We live in The Woodlands, TX and there's this area called the Waterway that just fit the bill for this little endeavor.  He wanted the Pavilion (where all the concerts are held) to be the big city of Nineveh, and there's plenty of water, boats and trees around it to capture the rest of the story.  All-in-all, it was the perfect setting. 

What I liked most about this project was that I was able to be of some help and spend time with Eriek while he worked on the project, instead of him being stuck on the computer writing for days and days on his own while I barely get to see him.  Basically, I was the Puppet Master, arranging the characters as he described what he wanted for that part of the story.

Here I am setting up the Ninevites outside of their city as Eriek gets the framing for the shot set up.

As you can see though, these guys were tricky as they didn't want to stand on their own.  We propped twigs under their feet and that helped until the wind kept blowing them over!  Eriek finally got a great shot in between gusts...

Nice evil Ninevites, huh?  They are happy little Beijing mascots plus a little Kuwait bear :)  Then we moved on to the boat scenes.  Jonah is the bird because his name means dove (foolish bird).  The Athens mascots are the mariners.  The people at the boat house were nice enough to let us use a kayak for our photo shoot!

Jonah being thrown overboard is one of my favorite pics!  We used a wire hanger and I was dangling him over the water and we photoshopped it out :)

And, of course, the whale spitting up Jonah on the shore near Nineveh.  (The whale was the mascot from the Montreal World Championships.)

And one of the last pictures was Jonah writing his story in the Bible.

There were many more pics, but I don't want to steal Eriek's work of art!  It was just so much fun to do, and I think it would be a great project to do with your kids!  Not only is it a lot of fun to take your silly stuffed animals and make them act out scenes in the Bible, but you get to know the story you're acting out much better and deeper.

Even if you don't have kids, be your own kid!  I encourage you to try it with a friend- you'll laugh so hard while doing it, then you'll have pictures to look back on and smile at.  And you'll probably get to know God a little more in the process.