Preparing for Easter

Hudson LOVES Easter eggs.  I'm not sure what it is about them but he has been begging since right after Christmas to get the Easter eggs out to play with.  About a month ago we brought home eggs from church to fill with candy for the church Easter egg hunt.  We had them for a week and Hudson was in egg heaven.  We played Easter egg hunt all week long and he was very sad when we had to take them back to church.  Although he did enjoy filling them with candy.

So I knew I had to play it up for him this week getting ready for Easter....but I wanted to make sure he understood the TRUE story of Easter, rather than just the candy and Easter egg part.  So I made him a set of Resurrection Eggs.  He loved them.  He already knew the story, but this gave him lots more details to add to it.  

• a small leaf to represent a palm branch at Jesus’ triumphal entry
• 3 quarters to represent the 30 pieces of silver that Judas Iscariot received
• a piece of bread to represent the bread broken at the Last Supper
• a tiny piece of paper rolled into a scroll to represent Jesus’ prayer in the garden
• a piece of leather or thick fabric to represent the soldier’s whipping Jesus
• a branch from a thorn bush to represent the crown of thorns
• 2 nails to represent the nails and the cross
• a die to represent the soldier’s casting lots for Jesus’ clothes
• a small twig with one end broken off to represent the spear piercing Jesus’ side
• a piece of thin fabric to represent Joseph wrapping Jesus in clean linen cloth
• a rock to represent the stone rolled in front of the tomb
• And then, of course, the last egg was EMPTY!  Just like the tomb.  

His favorite egg was probably the one with the money in it.  (He loves to play with money.)  But he did tell me yesterday that he had been eating the bread out of the egg (which is now a good week old).  My favorite part was when he was showing his eggs to Binga and telling her the story.  He pulled out the "whip" and said "Know what this is?  Turn around I'll show you!"  Ha! (It was only a little twig with a piece of string tied to it. He probably did try it on Tate when I wasn't looking.)

Another day last week, while the boys were napping, I filled Easter eggs with snacks and hid them out in the front yard.  Then Hudson found them all and the boys had their snack.  And then we played Easter egg hunt for another hour or two...

We also dyed eggs over at my mom's last week, but I didn't get any pictures on my camera.  Hudson really enjoyed doing that too.