How we do Easter (at least, this year!)
A reader wrote to me shortly before Easter asking if I'd share what we do to celebrate Easter. Our Easters are much less predictable than our Christmases, but I thought I could at least share what we did this particular year.
On Good Friday, we attended the service at our church (well, Mr. FG and I participated...I played the piano and he ran sound). Since we're kind of essential personnel, our attendance at this service is pretty faithful. 😉
On Saturday morning, Mr. FG had to work as usual, but the kids and I headed down to the pier with many of our neighbors for a community egg hunt.
Ivy makes a great egg hiding place!
There were sack races and other games for the kids.
Zoe wasn't too sure about this whole sack-racing thing.
On Saturday night, my husband and I had a grand time stuffing a big pile of plastic eggs with candy, and on Sunday morning before church, we sent the kids to the office while we hid eggs all over the house.
It is our practice to hide the eggs in different zones given the disparity in our children's ability to find hidden objects (!).
Zoe's were in her room, and Lisey's were hidden in the room she shares with Sonia.
Sonia's eggs were in the living room.
Which has more hiding opportunities than one might think.
Mr. Frugal Girl hid all of Joshua's eggs in his room, which means that they were delightfully hard to find. Since I was busy helping Sonia and Zoe with their hunting, my camera and I didn't really make it into Joshua's room. I only took one really bad photo of him, unfortunately, and no good ones. I'm sorry, bud! I'll follow you around next year...promise.
Using these plastic eggs means we don't have to buy that dreaded Easter grass and it also means that we don't have to buy individually packaged candy.
We just buy big bags of jelly beans and M&Ms and divvy them up in the eggs.
We did put Peeps inside some of the eggs, of course.
After we finish the egg hunt, we usually let our kids eat some candy, and then all the rest of the eggs go into a big bowl on our kitchen table. Our kids are allowed to choose one egg after lunch and one after dinner, which is our usual modus operandi with candy anyways.
We went to church on Easter morning just like we do every other Sunday, and afterwards, we went to my brother's house to have dinner with my side of the family. I did bring my camera, but since I was busy chatting with family, the only pictures I have are of the supremely adorable babies that were in attendance.
So, dear inquisitive reader, there you have it!
What Easter traditions do you have?
I got up first, made our traditional Easter breakfast: eggs, bacon, and poppyseed-lemon muffins.
Next, Elizabeth got up and found the eggs that the Easter bunny left for her, munched on candy, and tried on the new rainboots the bunny left for her.
We went off to our UU Church's Easter Service followed by the Easter Egg Hunt in the gardens.
Our family always gets together for an Easter lamb dinner.
I hear you on the Easter grass! I absolutely DESPISE the stuff - winds up everywhere you don't want it. Many years ago I resorted to using the shreddings from our paper shredder. I save the colored papers that are spring/Easter colors, run them through, and voila! lovely Easter 'grass'. In a pinch, I've also lined the baskets with tissue paper which is then carefully re-folded and re-used for other purposes. We have done pretty much the same thing - Easter Services, loose candy, plastic eggs, egg hunts with the cousins, dinner with family (varied menu every year!).
We also use shredded paper. (Plastic grass is not pet, vacuum, or mommy friendly.) Their baskets were filled with candies when they woke. They were also gifted with a book (the boy) and two Barbies (the girl).
Our egg hunting was fun. It was only the eggs that we colored the night before.
Church wasn't as moving for us this year as it probably was for you. At our old church we were very involved with services Thrusday through Sunday. We are still shopping around and waiting for Him to show us where we belong.
Thank you for sharing your Easter. It was cute to take a peak into the kids rooms.
My. Mr. does not help with the festivities so it was me who stuffed plastic eggs & baskets the night before. I have always stuffed the baskets but we did have a small hunt for my grandbaby girls which my older girls helped organize on the day of Easter. We got up, went to church, came home & I finished what cooking I'd not done the day before. To save time & allow mom more enjoyment, mom used the crockpots (I have 2 large but could not find my smaller one in our moving mess from last summer lol). I'd gotten 2 hams at a really great price & not long after my oldest daughter, her hubby, & their 2 girls came over as did my 21 year old son with his girlfriend. I'd not had time to have the kids color eggs before but they were boiled & ready to go so I decided to see how it worked out to do it on the day of Easter. It was a huge hit & even my son & girlfriend played along! So, a new tradition is born!
Other then that, we all just relaxed, it was a lot of fun & we will be doing it again next year.
I'm very proud to have found a bunch of uses for leftover ham. One bone is in the freezer waiting some sort of soup. Aside from eating a bunch of it plain, some got placed with the leftover hashbrown casserole into a potato soup, then we had breakfast for supper one night mixing it into a mix of hashbrowns & scrambled eggs.
I use a lot of holiday leftovers and make Carbonara Pasta the night after. It is an easy way to use ham, bacon, peas, and other things.
I had really been wanting to make your overnight cinnamon twists, so this year I made them for my parents and my boyfriend, and we had that for breakfast Easter morning with some fresh fruit my mom cut up. It was such a nice, springy breakfast; perfect for Easter morning!
It isn't Easter for me unless I hear the Exsultet. We went to to the Great Vigil (Saturday night) at a cathedral, Sunday morning church, then a family feast of roast lamb, spring vegetables, the extra altar bread (a homemade loaf used for communion, made the ancient way) and cheesecake. There were a few small treats for the toddler. When mine were little, we had easter egg hunts while I made dinner.
My husband and I celebrate by going to Friday night service and then by going to church in the morning and finishing out the service by singing the Hallelujah Chorus. My parents both don't have family around, but we have been in the same church for 19 years and they have become our family. So they had us and about 20 other close friends over for a huge dinner. We sat around afterwards and enjoyed talking. None of my siblings or I have small children (or any children) yet, so we don't have any fun easter egg hunts yet. I love your idea of hiding all the eggs around the house. That is really fun.
I don't get to hide candy any more because the cat finds it, knocks it on the floor and then the dogs eat it (and get sick if it's chocolate). So, I stuff the baskets the night before; each girl gets a small gift along with candy. Last year they got flip flops (2 pair/$5 at Old Navy) in their baskets; this year they each got a $5 Starbucks card. We always have fruit and Goldenrod Eggs (http://thinnerandwiser.wordpress.com/2010/04/04/easter-morning-goldenrod-eggs/). This was the first year I didn't prepare a special Easter dinner for some reason; I think we had pizza or something! Because it was Sunday, I also did the laundry (my oldest daughter helps).
My Easter tradition? It's a great one. I take the kids to my brother and sister-in-law's house to enjoy Easter! LOL. We don't actually celebrate Easter (we're Jewish), but my brother and SIL do, and have invited us each year to join them. It's a wonderful, family time, and of course the kids do love the candy and the fantastic food.
Here in Germany, Good Friday and Easter Monday are holidays. Good Friday we had traditional lunch, "Maultaschen" (they are like swabian ravioli and they get eaten in vegetable broth or roasted). In Swabia it is a tradition to eat them on Good Friday although they contain meat. In the Middle Ages, people thought that God can't see the meat because it is hidden in the pasta. Also, since I am 2 I got a baked Easter lamb every year on Easter Sunday. The nice lady who always made them for us gave me the recipe and so this year, for the first time in my life, I made my own Easter lamb (Unfortunately, she has Alzheimers and is not able to cook or bake anymore). Also we went to church on Easter Sunday (they had an American youth choir as special guests and they sang so awesome) and on Easter Monday.
I LOVE your photos!! Thank you for taking them and posting them. I enjoy seeing how you've taken sometimes something very boring and made it look like it would be something that Martha Stewart took! I enjoyed "watching" the kids go Easter egg hunting!
I love the idea of zones. Camille pretty much found all the eggs this year, although she sweetly took a bunch of hers and put them in her "bubby's" basket. Such a sweet big sister. We woke up in the morning read from the Jesus Storybook Bible & then I had a few small gifts in their easter basket. Chris got a ton of dark chocolate peanut m&m's (our favorite). You would be quite proud, I stocked up on our m&m stash the Tuesday after Easter. I remembered it from your m&m post and rushed to the discount easter candy in search of our beloved m&m's. Instead of paying $3.40 for a bag, I paid $1.08.
🙂