Before I let any more post-Easter-2025-time pass, I’m capturing my memories of it. I just love that the celebration of Easter, remembering the atonement and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, happens at springtime, at least in North America. I love the amazing change from winter to spring with the bursting of blooms and greenery. It’s such a perfect backdrop for feeling the possibility of change of our own lives from being sinners in bondage to sin and death, to saints in the kingdom of God in joy, redeemed through the blood of Jesus Christ.

Even though Easter came late this year, I still wasn’t quite ready. Not everything turned out the way I wanted to. Here are my memories, musings, and lessons learned.

1. First, I love the tradition from Emily Belle Freeman of cutting a branch off a tree or bush in your yard on Palm Sunday and putting it in a vase. Then later in the week for one of her other Easter traditions you are supposed to write testimonies on slips of paper and put them in plastic eggs and hang them on the tree. I’m still figuring that other tradition out. It seems easy enough but it just hasn’t happened yet, either because every night over dinner, we don’t have time for this activity to not feel rushed. I’m also stuck on the logisitcs of hanging the eggs. I have the tiny eggs but they don’t have holes in them to thread the twine through. Maybe I will get eggs that have holes or just tape the twine on the eggs for next year. Or switch out my Resurrection Eggs that do have holes in them for the eggs I bought last year for this purpose but haven’t used.

2. I participated in a Good Friday concert involving an orchestra and choir for my church, playing the violin. What an amazing experience! It was a 55 voice orchestra. I played 4 songs: one that was super difficult with lots of sixteenth notes, called “Worthy is the Lamb,” “I Feel My Savior’s Love,” “He Sent His Son,” and a piece from Handel’s Messiah. I missed a lot of notes and had some bowing out of order (going the opposite direction as the rest of the violins), as I am a very rusty violinist after not playing much in over 30 years. I have been wanting to get back into violinist mode for years, as I miss the beauty and joy of playing. When I saw this opporunity, I knew it was finally time. I have a friend who is a professional violinist, having been raised by a professional violinist, but that I am not. I started playing in 4th grade when I heard our grade school was starting on orchestra. I had fallen in love with the violin and asked my mom if she would get me one so I could be part of an orchestra. Thus began my humble violinist career. I played in my school’s orchestra from 4th to 11th grade and then put it aside until now. I took private lessons from 9th to 11th grade, then quit because I just didn’t feel that good at it, not good like in the other skills I had mastered, including reading, writing, and math, with all the AP classes I took. I had two friends in the neighborhood who were sisters and played in the orchestra. One on the cello, one on the viola. They had a mother who was superb at playing the piano. I always felt, haha, pardon the pun, second fiddle to them. I gave in to the thought of “I’ll never be as good as them, so I may as well give up.” Looking back, I just wish I had reached out to my teacher and asked for more help in getting better.

Playing again, in this Easter orchestra as an adult, was a great brain exercise for me and a lesson in humility. This was was my Easter offering to the Lord. I’m grateful the director didn’t kick me out with all my slowness and wrong notes! Let’s just say, impostor syndrome is real! When I was playing the right notes, LOL, it felt so good to feel that orchestra vibe again, of being part of a team that creates beauty synchronously, under the direction of a master conductor. It is a great simulation of life under the direction of Jesus.

3. My married daughter and I dyed Easter eggs with her two little boys. This is the first Easter she has spent with us in years because they lived away in Califnornia for a a few years. But now they live about 25 minutes away! I haven’t dyed eggs in probably 8 years or more because nobody has seemed interested in it since she flew the coop, years ago to go to college, and the younger ones have grown up to be teens. Married daughter and I both love arts and crafts so this was heaven for me. We used this Martha Stewart book shown below, which picked up when thrifting a few years ago, for egg decorating ideas.

I love her tip to use electrical tape for blocking off sections that you don’t want colored. See the photo in the upper right corner of the book cover. Or course ours didn’t look nearly as elegant. When I was a child we used masking tape but electrical tape works so much better as it’s more flexible. I made an egg with stripes, an egg with checkered squares, and an egg with a cross on it. I figured I’d take photos of them the next day when I set them out for Easter dinner.

Sadly, the next day, when I went to warm up the eggs by putting them in a bowl with some hot water boiled from the teapot after taking hgem out of the fridge, the hot water washed all the dye away for them all to be uniformly pink. I guess we didn’t use enough vinegar with the dye so it would be colorfast regardless of temperature. So I ended up not getting photos of my art before it washed away! So sad!

The photos above are the ones my daughter and grandsons did. Anyway it felt so good to be back in crafting for holiday land again with my dear daughter. Next year I’m going to make sure we do the right amount of vinegar, so the dye doesn’t wash away in hot water, invite my mom to join us since she loves to craft too, and have a foam board with pins like Martha says to use in the book in order to dry the freshly dyed eggs. We used a regular old egg carton to hold the freshly dyed eggs. The problem with that though is that the water collects in the bottom of the carton and then that can get the next egg you put in there a different color on the bottom of the egg where it touches the puddle of dyed water.

4. We lit up our Immanuel Wreath on Easter Sunday instead of every day leading up to it like at Advent time. This time I put a platter under it to keep the wax from getting on the tablecloth. (I sill haven’t gotten the wax off the tablecloth from the time I went platter-less at Christmas. Ugh.) And I still can’t find my original glass platter I used in the old house before our move a year ago which fits the wreath much better. It was a wedding gift and has beautiful, embossed fruit images on the glass. Anyway, we did this over Easter Sunday Dinner when my married daughter and her little family were here. We only talked about three names “Good,” “Life,” and “Advocate.” The original plan was to light up each candle only after someone told a story of Jesus showing up in their life in that role, as we ate dinner. I could see it would take a long time to do that so I decided to just light up the whole wreath of candles after we just did three names.

The discussion of “advocate” took up a lot of time because my youngest child, the only one that I’m still homeschooling since the others are graduated from college and married, in college or on a mission, had just participated in a mock trial with other homeschooled students. I was the team coach. It was for the Hero LEMI Project class I am mentoring. We won! So it was fun to talk about this as a family. My husband, married daughter and son-in-law are all great conversationalists. My married daughter also did mock trials when she was a teen so this conversation was very engaging. By the time we were done talking about that and the role of advocates and that Jesus is the best criminal defense attorney ever, the grandsons were restless. I’m thinking that next year I will have some quiet toys ready for the grandsons during our discussion or just send them downstairs to play with Legos or Magnetiles while the rest of us talk. I will also have some note cards to pass out to everybody and give everyone about 5 – 10 minutes to write down. Then I want to keep the note cards in some kind of special Easter notebook or binder that has pocket pages. I want to keep everyone’s they write every year and see the changes that happen. I also want to keep the slips of paper with their testimonies. I wish I had started this years ago, but at least now I can start this when my grandsons are young and they can grow up with doing at Grandma’s.

Emily Belle Freeman is the creator of the Immanuel Wreath and the instigator of this tradition. I know she has small grandchildren. So I want to pick her brain and find out how she does this tradition with restless children. If anybody knows her personally will you please send her my way so I can ask her?

This year we did the egg hunt on Saturday instead of Sunday, after dinner. We are missing my child who loves to grill so we didn’t have a BBQ. When he was home he loved to be on BBQ duty. We are missing him because he left to go on a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That’s the greatest reason ever though so I’m not even sad. I did the Resurrection Eggs activity afterwards after the hunt while everyone was eating candy. I hope to make this a yearly thing with my grandsons so they look forward to it and can tell the story of the atonement and resurrection of Jesus by heart and know how much He loves us.

Then on Sunday we went to church and had a glorious sacrament meeting. A little bit of a recap is here. I sang in the ward choir as part of the church service, singing the hymn from the new collection of hymns, “Behold the Wounds In Jesus’ Hands.” Listen below. The words are here. It is just so, so, so beautiful!

I got the banner in the photo above that says, “He is Risen Indeed” from Jennifer Flanders over here. I just love how festive it looks!

After Sunday dinner we played parable charades, as directed by this wonderful book. The author says to use playdoh for temple sculpturades and regular charades for the parables charades. She suggests doing Temple Sculpturades for Holy Week Monday, because that’s when you talk about Jesus cleansing the temple, and then do Parables Charades on Wednesday for Parables Wednesday. I saved the charades for Sunday when the married daughter and her family would be here. But I wanted to do parables sculpturades. But the playdoh I made for sculpturades didn’t turn out because I didn’t realize we were so low on flour, on Easter Sunday, so the playdoh was too sticky. So that’s a lesson learned, to check for the ingredients needed way ahead of time. Next year I’m going to skip the playdoh and make cloud dough, out of corn starch, and hair conditioner, as shown below and here.

After the charades, my married daughter and her family, including the grandsons, left. So then we had singing time with three of my children with me playing the piano. We sang a few Easter songs that are linked in the April section of my family devotionals ebook. Then my BYU son left to go back to his place. So then we did our Come Follow Christ scripture reading and had family prayer and then watched Relative Race. It was a peaceful, glorious day. I’m so grateful for no snow or rain. I have experienced a few Utah Easters with each one. It actually started snowing on Good Friday but then stopped thank goodness. Crazy Utah weather!

We also watched Narnia the next night, Monday night, for Family Home Evening. It’s such a great story with an allegory of Christ, with His atonement and resurrection. I look forward to watching it with my grandchildren for a future Easter time.

All right, here’s what I’m going do next year, to make Easter even better, in addition to applying the lessons I learned above:

1. I think from now on I want to do a family Easter basket, like shown below, just for a little more fun, and say it’s the family Easter love basket, from our family love, not from the Easter bunny. I want to give family members the credit for giving, not some dumb pretend bunny made up to sell more toys. Of course all my kids are older so the ideas for little kids don’t apply. I’ll ask everybody who lives at home, now that I have teen and adult children, to contribute one inexpensive, simple thing the family will enjoy, whether it’s food, socks, a puzzle, a game, or even some pages of meaningful thoughts in the form of a letter or poetry. I’ll ask them to deposit it in the basket after people go to bed. The item can even be thrifted to save money, as I am all for thrifting, as you’ve seen here. Here’s a family Easter basket video, below, that I enjoyed, even though I’m not huge on the pirate theme of one of the games. And I don’t like Peeps. In my fantasy life I envision having all the time and money in the world to make gloriously naturally crunchy mom nontoxic, sugar-free treats and gifts including jewelry that promotes faith in Christ, scripture study aids, classic books, gardening tools, items for summer like new beach towels or swimsuits, puzzle books, aprons, kitchen gadgets, and fidget toys. Reality is settling in though to bring me back to the idea of having each family member contribute, even with cheap thrifted items. It just sounds fun and encouraging of generosity to ask everyone to give of themselves in some small way, to remember the infinite way Christ did, which we are celebrating at Easter time.

2. I want to give Easter baskets anonymously to lonely and elderly people, like the Holy Week for families book talks about on page 22.

3. I want to find my Gospel Art Kit with my pictures of the Holy Week timeline events to put in order on the wall like I have in years’ past. Another casualty of the move apparently. The photo below is of the art prints from a previous Easter.

4. I want to plan a sing-along time with friends to sing Easter songs like I’ve done in year’s past, and introduce the songs from this songbook below to my friends. Many of the songs pertain to Easter. I found it while thrifting last year, one of my best thrifting treasures ever!

5. I want to do the Plan of Happiness Treasure Hunt with the grandsons and the children still at home on the Sunday after Easter, as outlined in the book below, on page 31. My husband’s cousin Janet Hilton Hales and her husband Joe Hales wrote it. They were pioneers in pushing for Christ-centered Easter celebrations, over 20 years ago. We’ve done this treasure hunt on and off over the years, it’s fun and spiritual at the same time. It’s wonderful for teaching what Jesus did in the spirit world on Salvation Saturday, after the crucifixion and before He appeared to Mary in the garden. I keep an envelope full of the clues taped inside the back cover for easy use.

6. I’m thinking I want to create some sensory bins that are Easter and spring-themed for my grandsons to play with while we discuss the names of Christ for the Immanuel Wreath. This is for when they are done eating Easter Sunday dinner but the rest of us aren’t ready to leave the table. I want them to hear the conversation, and I don’t want us to be pulled away to play with them away from the conversation. More ideas are here and here for DIY sensory bins and materials. I’d also like to buy the pretty one here.

If I’m really ambitious, I’ll create some kind of Christ-centered Easter sensory bin inspired by this video above. Or maybe just make tiny tokens out of sculpey clay that are featured in the DIY Resurrection Eggs here and put them in a bin of colored chickpeas. Or just use the regular tokens that are in those instructions I just linked to. It would be so cool to somehow come up with little tokens that represent the names of Christ, like a light bulb or lamp for “light” but some of those names are too abstract liked “advocate.” Hey maybe my married daughter and I could spend an afternoon making these sensory bins next winter! It would totally be something so fun to look forward to doing in the January doldrums. A girl can always dream right? I could also buy this one on etsy shown below. I’ll only get it out on Easter Sunday to make it extra special.

7. I also want to get an Easter creche with figures the grandchildren can play with, like this one maybe.

8. Finally, I want to act out the Easter story, just like we do the Nativity story at Christmas, like Elder Stevenson shared that his family does, in the talk below. We could act it with the items shown in the basket above or do it with people moving and speaking different parts.

9. I finally read through Emily Belle Freeman’s book shown above to find out if the traditions described in the book match the traditions she shows in her videos over here. I figured out two things:

a. They match up except for the first day. On the first day, in the book, she suggests you plant wheat berries in soil in a small container, to turn into wheat grass. She focuses on Lazarus, saying that the grass represents life coming forth from a dark place. I realized this past week that her traditions in the book are not actually linked to the days of Holy Week. Her traditions focus on people involved in the story, not on the events of the days of Holy Week. In the set of videos, the only tradition that actually focuses on a day is the tradition with getting a branch in a vase on Palm Sunday.

b. It is too hard for me to do her traditions, one each day of Holy Week, plus the traditions for Holy Week in the Holy Week book shown below, on each day of Holy Week. So, I’m going to do Emily’s once a week, in the 5 weeks leading up to Easter. Then we will end on Palm Sunday and do her Palm Sunday tradition of the branch in a vase. That means if Easter is in March, like it sometimes is, we will be starting Emily’s Easter traditions in February. That definitely sounds fun to break up the winter monotony. It will be fun to plant Easter grass in February. Then the last tradition we will do on Easter Sunday like she says.

So that’s my debrief of our Easter 2025. I’m excited that I already have plans for Easter 2026! Every year, I get closer and closer to making it my ideal, a festival of celebration in line with Elder Gary E. Stevenson, who quoted N.T. Wright in the April 2023 General Conference:

“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,

I’d love to hear what went well for your Easter and what you plan for next year, please share them in the comments, if you’d like, below.