Easter in Arizona

The boys and I have been in Arizona for over a week now and we've already collected quite a few photos!  But, since Resurrection Sunday is such a special celebration for our family, as we remember the sacrifice Christ made and His victory over death, we wanted to do a special Easter blog, first!  (More photos to come in a later post!)

As a family tradition, we make special Resurrection Rolls - something that began when Jack was just a year and a half and we were visiting our special friends in Pennsylvania.  We use crescent rolls to represent Jesus' burial clothes and the boys wrap them around a large marshmallow, representing Jesus' body.  We place them in the "tomb" (the oven) and wait.  Here are the boys making their Resurrection rolls.

When the rolls come out of the "tomb", we notice that the clothes are still there...but there is no body!  Jesus is gone, because He's alive!  They were both so excited at this point!!

While we were waiting for the rolls to bake, we went through our homemade Resurrection eggs, made with small drawings of special moments in Jesus life culminating with His death, resurrection and ascension.  Jack can almost tell the whole story himself and it was so sweet to see the boys get excited about what scene the next egg would hold. 

 

 Jack's understanding of Jesus and what He did for us has increased tremendously in this last year.  In February, he prayed and asked Jesus to change his heart and the evidence of his new, beautiful, child-like faith has been precious to watch.  We often read children's Bible stories, but he really expressed an interest in a "big" Bible so he could "learn more about God and Jesus."  So, Josh and I decided to get him his own special full-text Bible for Easter.  He was so proud about carrying it to church with him on Sunday!  (A quick explanation about the tie: George had a tie with his outfit and Jack was sad that he did not.  So, we found one of my dad's and even though it was really too big, Jack was happy to have one, too!)

We had a nice afternoon family gathering to celebrate Easter.  It was really fun to see eight of the cousins (ages 4 1/2 to four months!) together...though we really missed the ones who were absent!  After a good meal, lots of romping in the yard and playing with Uncle Nick, the kids had an egg hunt and ran all over the acre back yard to search for their treasures.  It was something to see! 

We hope you all had a special Easter, too...and that you live every day of the year in the wonder of what Christ has done!