Good Friday

Thursday night Hunter woke up several times, but in the morning he didn't have a fever and said he felt better, so we got ready to meet our friends at the arboretum.  Before we left, we put up our cross...

We had breakfast at the arboretum with our friends, Kim, Amelia, and Caleb, and then got ready for the egg hunt.  The kids were divided by age, so Kim stayed with Amelia and Char while I went with Hunter...

 (He's in the green jacket.)

Charlotte, Amelia, and Hunter after the hunt...

Grey slept in his seat all morning...

After the hunt, we explored for a while until it was time for the face painting, etc.  The kids loved this slide...

Then checked out the teepee...

Finally we headed to the petting zoo and then, FACE PAINTING!!!  Amelia and Hunter decided they didn't want to have their face painted, but Charlotte was pumped!  She's checkimg it out in the mirror here...

Then we went over to the Eddie Coker concert, which was so fun!  And really loud.

Char loved dancing and being silly...

But I could tell Hunter was starting to feel bad, so after the concert, we headed to the car.  He moaned and shivered all the way home, slept all afternoon and then had a 103 fever that night.  You know that made me feel like parent of the year.

I'm always so sad on Good Friday.  I know that Sunday is coming, but the weight of what Jesus did for me on Friday is almost too much.

"But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities,
The punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
And by his wounds we are healed."
Isaiah 53:5

Oh, how he loves us...

Holy Week - Easter Scavenger Hunt

The week caught up with me this morning, so my sweet husband worked from home so I could have a little break.  I was so thankful that he took Charlotte to preschool this morning.  Hunter laid around most of the day, but was up for our activity after dinner.

 

This was another Pinterest find and we all loved it!  I'll definitely repeat it next year.  First we had to look for something black.  Thanks to the gospel fuzzies from AWANA, Charlotte quickly told me that black stood for sin without me even helping her.  I led her to her bows to find her first item...

 

Next we had to find 2 sticks for the cross.  Charlotte had brought home this little resurrection garden from preschool that day, and it had 2 sticks glued together to make a cross in it, so she just grabbed that... 

The next item was something red for Jesus' blood.  She quickly ran to her bows, picking a red one this time...

At first Hunter didn't want to participate, but when he saw how much fun it was, he grabbed my phone so he could read each of the items to Charlotte...

Next was something cloth for the cloth they wrapped Jesus' body in.  Charlotte found her baby's wipes that Aunt Katie made her last Christmas...

Next we needed a rock to represent the stone that was rolled in front of the tomb...

And then, something empty to show that the tomb was empty!

I led the kids to Hunter's room and we found that empty Star Wars M&M container.

 

Then we looked for something white to represent a clean heart.  Charlotte chose Batman:)

 

After that we looked for something green to represent how we grow in Christ...

A green pencil did the trick.

Finally we needed something new because Jesus made all things new.  I put together an Easter basket for the kids for the something new (we've never done these before, so they won't miss anything on Easter morning)...

They were a lot more excited than they look here:)

Such a fun activity that focuses on Jesus!

Holy Week - M&Ms

Wednesday's are crazy for us because of AWANA and homework, so I knew we needed a quick Holy Week activity for the kids planned for that day.  We didn't end up having homework or going to church for AWANA because Hunter was still sick, but since we had spent 3 hours at the doctor's office that afternoon, I was thankful for the quick activity.

 

I found this on Pinterest and loved it.  So we read the poem and examined our M&M's, talking about the E standing for Eater, the 3 standing for the 3 days in the tomb, the M standing for the Messiah, and the W standing for Jesus being the only one worthy of our praise.  Then of course, we ate some!

Well, Char and I did.  Hunter licked his and threw it in the trash.  Poor kid hasn't had much of an appetite.  And apparently, he doesn't like the peanut M&Ms...who knew?

Holy Week - Coloring Eggs

Hunter had  a rough day yesterday being sick, so he wasn't up for dyeing eggs with us.  Charlotte had a blast, though...

I found this blog on Pinterest that gave me the idea to tell the story of Easter with the dyed eggs.  We didn't follow it exactly (mostly because things were so crazy with Hunter being sick, that I didn't plan very well), but we did use some of her ideas.  After we colored the eggs, I held up each egg and we talked about what the color could stand for.  Here's what we came up with:

Green - for the palm branches that the people raised as Jesus rode into Jerusalem for the Passover feast...Charlotte loves proudly quoting, "Hosanna!  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!"  She says it multiple times per day:)

Orange - for the coins Judas received for betraying Jesus...Char keeps calling him June.  I guess she gets that from June on the Little Einsteins:)

Purple - for royalty because Jesus is King of kings

Red - for Jesus' blood that covers all of our sins

Pink - we drew a cross on the pink egg in white (or tried to...you can kind of see it below), so it stood for Jesus' purity and his dying on the cross for us

Yellow - for the Resurrection and streets of gold in heaven

Blue - for heaven

 

After we were done, Charlotte picked up each egg and told James and Hunter what they meant (Hunter is under that red blanket on the chair...poor thing)...

She was so excited telling them what all of the colors stood for...

Tonight she grabbed the eggs and was telling us the story again, which makes me love this activity even more.  So thankful for Pinterest this Easter!

Holy Week - His Blood Covers All

Monday after school Hunter wasn't feeling great and has become worse over the last 2 days, so he hasn't been overly excited about the activities, but did enjoy our activity on Monday.  We went to the store after school and picked up some white flowers and red dye...

 

I cut each of us some flowers and found 3 small vases...

 

We put our flowers in vases and talked about how the color white stands for purity, and that Jesus is the only person who has ever been sinless.  We had a conversation about Jesus dying on the cross so that we could go to heaven with him, and I explained that Jesus had to take on all of our sins while he was on the cross.  That for all of us to be saved from our sins, there had to be a perfect, faultless sacrifice...and our pure Jesus was that sacrifice.

So we used the red food coloring to represent the blood that Jesus poured out for us...

Later that day, the white flowers started to turn red...

It's a beautiful picture to me of how our pure Savior took on our sin, making himself scarlet so that we could be white as snow before God...