The Connelly Chronicles: He is Risen Indeed! (Easter 2012)

It has been a week filled with trials as our church suffered a great loss, and our friends rallied together in love to minister to a hurting family. The burden of death has been palpable this Holy Week, and so Easter, the day we celebrate the Resurrection, was a welcome relief and reminder that Life Triumphs.

Our three bunnies: Gryffy, Mr. Tubbins, Lorelei

The grass is only beginning to sprout from our tomb scene, and the stone we used to close the tomb on Good Friday has been rolled away.

Easter Eve was filled with festivities. First, we planted flowers in our window box. Lorelei picked these yellow lovelies.

Both the kids dug their hands in the dirt and got to planting.

We made bunny cinnamon rolls with raisin eyes and almond teeth.

Daddy and the kids played catch. I love Lorelei's face. Definitely my daughter :o)--I'm still frightened of the ball!

And the kids helped me cook a feast. Okay, so they crunched the cornflakes... and the bag burst all over me! Instead of cleaning up, the kids decided to start eating handfuls of the mess.

I love Easter dinner (which was Easter Eve dinner for us, with leftovers for Easter Day). We had ham, black eyed peas, green bean casserole, hash brown casserole, cranberries, sweet potatoes and bunny rolls.

The bunny rolls were simple and so cute! That pencil bag with rice in it, next to Lorelei's plate, was from Good Friday at church--the kids went through the stations of the cross and put a little object into a bag/bottle of rice to make I-Spy toys.

We dyed our eggs.

And the Easter Bunny made an appearance. I was going to wear the outfit, but the kids absolutely insisted Daddy do the honors :o)

Mark's such a good sport. Look how delighted the kids are!

He really got into the role hopping toward Lorelei.

The Easter Bunny played a game of dodge ball with water balloons. I don't think the kids could have had more fun trying to pelt their Daddy from the window over the garage.

"Can't get me!"

"Oh yeah?"

"I got you!"

It was just a spur of the moment idea, but I think this might be our newest (and favorite) Easter tradition... Bunny Balloon Dodge Ball!

I think Daddy enjoyed it, too! Abandoning all inhibitions is good fun.

We went to Easter Eve service at Heartland to clear out seats for Easter morning... and it was still packed.

Much like our planting of pumpkin seeds come Halloween (which yield mini-pumpkins in the witching hour), we plant jelly beans on Easter Eve...

And are rewarded with a harvest of lollipops and chocolate bunnies.

The Easter loot.

Gryffy had a red string ("Red! I got red! My favorite color!"--Yes, sweet boy who colors the world red, we know) and Lorelei had a purple string leading to their Easter Buckets, hidden on the swing set.

"Look! I found the Golden Egg!" Lorelei exclaims. She's been dreaming about this egg this week, and in her dreams she finds it.

Ah, the treasure!

Gryffy and Lorelei both got Lego things they've been pining after, as well as water guns, swim suits, and underwear.

And I bought matching Bibles for Mark and I. I've always used my dad's Bible, but it's so special to me because it belonged to him that I can't mark in it. And I LOVE to write and doodle all over margins. I had our names inscribed on the covers (so I don't mark up Mark's by mistake). I'm hoping we'll use them to read, debate and study together.

I did a LOT of research, and decided that the Archaeological Study Bible NIV was my favorite. That, and the Maxwell Leadership Bible (which was smaller and cost three times as much--I got these for a bargain under $30 on clearance).

See? I've been marking it up already. I love the beautiful pages, the earthy tones, and the endless diagrams. And the footnotes are very useful on the passages that are contradictory (like when timelines don't match up between the Gospels) and to point out the parallels between OT and NT. I'm learning so much, questioning so much, examining so much. It's kind of like an excavation, and I love digging into it.

I've also started a journal for studying various topics. I alphabetized several subjects that interest me in the Table of Contents, assigned them a page each, and then write "cont. on pg. __" when I need to write more. My small group is doing a study on 24 Hours that Changed the World by Adam Hamilton, which brought my attention to Easter/Holy Week.

These are notes I took from the Good Friday service at Heartland.

Some notes from Mothers Together.

The rest of Easter morning has been spent watching The Sound of Music (G ran to the TV and exclaimed, "My favorite part! The water part!" when Maria and the Von Trapp kids fell off the canoe, and sang along to one of our favorite songs, Edelweiss) and Mary Poppins while playing Legos (I've been trying to snap my fingers and rid the floor of Lego mess, but I don't have Ms. Poppin's magic touch).
Mark made crepes for breakfast, we had leftovers for lunch and are going to Grammy/Bpop's house for dinner and another egg hunt (eggs benedict will have to wait for tomorrow).
The kids insisted we do our Resurrection Eggs during lunch. We made them a couple years ago as a simple way to review Holy Week (very similar to the I-Spy activity we made at church, but with slightly different objects and symbols to tell more of the Easter story (the days leading up to the crucifixion and following the resurrection, through the ascension). Lorelei added her baby bird to keep the mama bird company on top :o)

Gryffy just gave me one of his lollipops and several chunks of white chocolate. He's such a sweet boy to his mama. Then Lorelei handed me a green lollipop, because she knows it's my favorite color. Precious ones. Now back to Legos again--can't wait to take them to KC's new LegoLand!

Gryffy's putting together the bone prison from Pirates of the Caribbean.

The beginning of Lorelei's "bird world," as she calls it. She added quite a bit more after I took the pic. They've been playing with Legos for three hours and still aren't done! I helped G put all his pirate stuff together; Lorelei's using her creativity and doing hers freestyle.

Meanwhile, Mark's been building other things upstairs. We finally replaced our 20-year-old white carpet (you can imagine how gross it was). He's been moving furniture back into place and painting/cutting/installing larger baseboards this Easter morning.