Easter - The Long Weekend

I love Easter!  Actually I love any excuse to celebrate with family and friends. There just isn't enough excuses to celebrate in my opinion.  Easter though, is up there with one of my most favourite time of the year.  It holds such scared meaning for us as a family, meaning that goes far beyond the humble Easter Egg.
The old 'EB' doesn't get much on a look in around here, yes the kids still get Easter eggs and greedily eat most of their eggs before the weekend is out. I mean come on that is what I would do! (I mean do - shhhh)

Easter weekend is filled with traditions both old and new, ones that even if we wanted too the kids don't let us forget them.  Again I love traditions, they are so important in a family, they are what holds us to each other, what gives us a sense of belonging to something much bigger than ourselves. In saying that there were a couple of traditions that we missed this year!

The wind and the rain threaten to dampen our Easter spirit this year and it nearly did a good job of it too. Our power went out at lunch time on Thursday and when our power is out we have no water.  Of course when we have no water everyone is extra thirsty aren't they!  We hold a family life group at our house every second week and at the last minute had to change locations for the occasion.  You just cannot have people at your house when you are flushing the toilets with buckets of water out of the pool!!  Family night went off without a hitch and saw the kids hunting around the house for various symbols pertaining to the Easter Story. The great big world of blogging is a treasury of good creative ideas for just about anything!
Check it out here!

Easter Friday - still no power! Groan.  I can cope without the power but no water......not my favourite! So after a quick clean up around the house we packed ourselves off for a Easter visit to Grandmas house armed with HOT CROSS BUNS of course (oh and a basket piled high with a few days worth of washing - Grandmas are good like that aren't they)  After a lovely morning of visiting and indulging on Easter treats we returned to our power back on!! Um Yay!!!  I have to admit I was getting a little grumpy about the whole no water thing.  Here is what our afternoon looked like.

Yip clean up duty!!  Not so sadly we lost an ugly old orange tree in the storm!  

Saturday we braved the town to do some last minute Egg shopping (stupid of us really) and to get a few bits and pieces for a shared lunch on Sunday.  Seriously everyone should stay away from town on a day stuck between two public holidays. Its just crazy dangerous!

Easter Sunday - the highlight of the weekend!  Even when I woke this morning and sat reading my bible, the day felt holy and sacred. I often get overwhelmed while thinking about what Jesus did for me, me who is so undeserving.  Brings tears to my eyes just typing this.

But while it was a super special day it certainly wasn't immuned to 'pre-church-I-just-want-to-get-out-the-door-with-the-house-tidy-and-no-one wearing-their-breakfast-on-their-face-and-still-in-their-pyjamas' stress and other everyday battles incidences.  

After all we are all human aren't we and I certainly don't want to pretend otherwise. 

Church was pretty special this morning.  I think everyone comes with an expectant heart and ready to worship and to thank and praise our Father. I love that.

This morning I had goosebumps.

Maybe I am a little bias but Jamie preached an awesome Easter message (his first one ever!) and together the whole congregation shared not only in the taking of communion together but a celebratory morning tea!  What a blessed morning!

Do I dare say that I do find it a little sad when chunks of the congregation are missing due to it being the long weekend and people take the opportunity to go away.  I get the spending time with family and making the most of the long weekend, we have done that in the past plenty of times but they really did miss out on something special today.

We were blessed this afternoon. Blessed with the company of good friends, AMAZING food and by golly a large quantity of laughter.  And the chocolate oh the chocolate! Eggs upon eggs upon eggs and then we can't forget the chocolate game!

Can one ever have enough chocolate?  Today I am thinking maybe.  

(But ask me tomorrow, my answer no doubt will be different.)

We thought that we could put off the traditional Easter Egg hunt until tomorrow. We tried to sell it to the kids by stating it would draw out the Easter fun even further. But alas it was not to be.

The weather wasn't our friend so we had to hide ALL 72 eggs inside! I hear you gasp!  No worries 66 of them were teeny tiny ones and 6 were big ones AND there are 6 kiddies!!!

It is actually quite hard to think of hiding spots for that many eggs when you are confined to two rooms!

Here in New Zealand where get an added bonus day off tomorrow being Monday, which makes the total weekend a glorious four day weekend!

 Ahhh I wonder who will get to sleep in tomorrow morning? I wonder if it will be me.

(please pick me please pick me pick me please)

Tomorrow will see us (weather permitting) doing another post-storm clean up of a tree down at church but other than that who knows. Its so nice having some free days with no plans.

 They can be very rare at times.

What Easter traditions do you have?