Before it gets too much past Easter…I want to preserve my memories of this most wonderful Easter season I’ve been enjoying. Easter came early this year, on March 31st. Here are all the things I did to enjoy the season and remember my Savior Jesus Christ’s sacrifice for me.

-I updated my list of Easter picture books over here on my other website, on the “Spring” page, under the April heading. Right after St. Patrick’s Day I checked out as many of those books that I don’t already have at the library and read them aloud for our Morning Basket time and to my grandsons. I found some new Easter titles for this year which I’m so excited about. So go to my new site that I mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph to see them!

-I displayed Easter picture books in a corner of my living room that has become my “shrine”‘ to seasonal picture books. For some reason doing this make me so happy! I just wish I had discovered the happiness this brings me before most of my children were out of the nest and done it back then. Sometimes I wish so much I could bring them all home and do my mothering better, all over again, with more picture book reading, more happy decorating, and more thriving instead of just surviving. Live and learn!

-I also kicked off the beginning of the Easter season sometime in March by finding this songbook above while thrifting for $1! I played at least one song from the book on the piano as a call in the morning for the family to gather for family devotional, where we pray and read the scriptures. It is so delightful! My favorite song is the song about the Resurrection of Jesus.

-We talked about the artwork as shown above, during Holy Week, and made a timeline of the Holy Week, using the scriptures on the back of the print. The prints are from my Gospel Art Kit that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints now publishes as the Gospel Art Book.

-I read aloud some Easter stories to my family from my Family Devotionals Ebook. The Easter section full of stories, songs, and poetry is here.

-we did an Easter egg hunt with the grands (grandchildren) the Sunday before Easter, on Palm Sunday, since they were leaving the next week before Easter to see their other grandmother in CA. I’m glad we did because on the actual Easter Sunday it was rainy and even snowy for about 30 minutes! Too cold and wet to do a hunt on that day.

-I took a break the last week of March from my usual reading (one book a month for my co-op school, and one book for my sisters’ book club, and then other random books) and read books relating to Easter. I’m not done with all of them, so will continue to read them in April. I have been reading these Easter-themed books, three serious and one for fun:

-My husband and I went to the temple on Good Friday to do some temple work for distant relatives. I felt so much peace being in the temple on that day, remembering my Savior Jesus Christ’s immense sacrifice and love for each of us.

-later that day on Good Friday, we took our 14-year-old son to a Good Friday concert with Eric D. Huntsman and his wife Deann, as narrators. They told the story of Holy Week with musical numbers interspersed. It was amazing and sacred. One little girl sang “I Wonder When He Comes Again,” with a fourth verse that is not in the Children’s Songbook. It was so beautiful! I’m so grateful we could go. The video below has Eric sharing a bit about the backstory of his creating a Holy Week celebration. I was sad our 18-year-old daughter couldn’t go because of her work schedule.

Eric also has books for Christmas and Easter to help families make these holidays more Christ-centered. Shown below. I haven’t studied them yet. I’m excited to delve into them this summer and fall and use them to prepare for next Christmas and Easter.

-I got out our Immanuel Wreath with the candles. Starting on Palm Sunday we lit at least 3 candles a day and talked about the name of Christ below each lit candle, either during dinnertime or right before bed.

-we watched Emily Belle Freeman’s videos for Holy Week, during dinner, and then did some of the traditions. My son got a branch of an apricot tree on Palm Sunday which we put in a vase of water, and we dyed our Easter eggs the Serbian way that Emily talks about with yellow onion skins to make them red.

-we attended our church service on Easter morning and heard beautiful testimonies of our Savior and ways of following him

-after church we came home and had a brunch of fish and boiled eggs and parsley

-we read and discussed the Book of Mormon scriptures according to the Come Follow Christ guide for Holy Week, over here, a little bit every morning, for our scripture devotional

-we had Easter Sunday dinner at my brother’s house. There was so much food! It was easy to stick on my ketovore diet there, as there were lots of low-carb options, especially meat: fish, chicken, roast beef, and ham. Yum! I had some of all the meat plus some green beans and brussels sprouts. Eating that way made me feel so satisfied I was not even tempted to eat any of the multitudinous desserts brought out later.

-after dinner we came home, and I broke out some jelly beans and read aloud the Jelly Bean Gospel from Jennifer Flanders, over here. No jelly beans for me however, as I’m staying keto. I made low-carb/keto chocolate for my husband and me to enjoy instead of jelly beans. My recipe is here.

-then we did the Parables of Jesus and Temple Sculpturades, with the three children who currently live at home. It was a hit! My youngest, the 14-year-old boy, helped me make the play doh. I got this idea from this book I reviewed over here, The Holy Week for Latter-day Saints by Wendee Rosborough. I put the words related to the temple and parables of Jesus from the author’s lists from that book on pieces of paper and put them in a bowl. Then we each picked one out and sculpted the word or story out of the play doh to see if the others could guess what we depicted. We did it all once for simultaneous play. IT was so delightful! Everybody laughed out loud at least once and smiled big. We are going to do this every year! I love the pig my daughter sculpted for the Prodigal Son story, as shown above. My 14-year-old really got into sculpting the story of the Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard. I had the parables book pictured above (which I found thrifting for $1, yay!!!) handy so we could refer to the parables as needed.

-the Monday night after Easter we gathered with some friends for soup and bread and sang Easter songs that I played on the piano, songs from my list over here. I love this! I definitely felt the Holy Spirit as we sang.

I believe in stretching out Easter to be a season. It was so early this year that I wasn’t quite ready to celebrate it completely the way I wanted to. Here’s what I still want to do for the month of April:

-decorate with an Easter egg garland as seen here

-write down our testimonies of Christ on small pieces of paper, put them inside plastic eggs, and then hang them on our apricot branch

-write down our favorite scripture for the year to add to our Easter banner that we have added to in past years.

-do our plan of Salvation Treasure Hunt as outlined in the book, A Christ-centered Easter, written by my husband’s cousin Janet Hales and her husband Joe Hales. This Treasure Hunt talks about Jesus’ visit to the Spirit World between his death and resurrection.

What I’m going to do next year:

-all of the above

-plus I want to do the Good Friday bag on Good Friday as shown in my post over here which Lani Hilton does.

-I also want to do the service project/Easter basket talked about in Wendee Rosborough’s book Holy Week for Latter-day Saint Families.

This past Easter season meant more to me than usual, in the context of death and new life. I’ve heard about three deaths of different people in my larger circle of friends in the three weeks before Easter, and then my son and his wife had a new baby the end of March. A new grandbaby for me! I’m so grateful for our Savior Jesus Christ and his gift to each of us of the opportunity to be cleansed of our sins and have eternal life. I know He’s real. I’m so grateful for His gift. I testify He lives and He gives grace to each of us with all our problems, weaknesses, trials, and sins. This beautiful video of the Crosby family singing the song Goodness of God summarizes my feelings of our Savior Jesus Christ.

I love this quote from Elder Gary Stevensons’ General Conference talk of April 2023 where he quotes N.T. Wright:

“We should be taking steps to celebrate Easter in creative new ways: in art, literature, children’s games, poetry, music, dance, festivals, bells, special concerts. … This is our greatest festival. Take Christmas away, and in biblical terms you lose two chapters at the front of Matthew and Luke, nothing else. Take Easter away, and you don’t have a New Testament; you don’t have a Christianity.”  (Elder Gary E. Stevenson, Liahona, May 2023)

Can you imagine the shift in our society when we have several generations of families and neighbors having joy together and getting renewed each year by an intensive celebration of Easter as our “greatest festival,” even greater than Christmas? I love this challenge/invitation! I invite you to join me in it!