1.This picture. If we are facebook friends you have probably seen it. My husband hates it…so I’ll probably delete it soon. But it is too funny not to show.
There are a couple of things I want to point out: Notice the bunny ears and the Star Wars Easter bucket. We were about to hunt eggs and he decided that he needed to go to the bathroom. There was already one little girl in the restroom and Tess would have thrown an all out fit if I took her inside. And why do that anyways if there is a nice flowerbed that can be watered. If this were my house on my cul-de-sac full of boys there would be nothing unusual about this photo. (The give away should be that the flowerbed isn’t full of weeds). But it isn’t my house, it is my friends in a slightly nicer neighborhood on a much higher trafficked street. Also she was not around ( she was hiding the eggs) to ok the “watering”…b/c she so would not have been ok with it. She also wouldn’t have been ok with the fact that he was aiming for that cute little ceramic frog. If you are ever in my neighborhood though….feel free to let your child water my weeds. Grown ups on the other hand must use the back yard...I mean the toilet.
2. Easter baskets….and the Easter bunny. The Easter bunny is kind of creepy. So is Santa if you think about it….but not nearly as much as giant bunny dressed in a hideous outfit. So we have never really done the whole Easter bunny thing. My kids have enough stuff as it is and it seems like we get as much candy at Easter as we do Halloween and they’ve never had the expectation….so I skipped the Easter bunny part. But this year, my son has noticed and begged for one of those giant hideous Easter baskets on display at Walmart. You know the big ones covered with cellophane paper filled with chocolate bunnies and dollar store toys. He wanted one in a bad way…..and I just couldn’t do it. Besides he hates chocolate ( I know, I’m not even sure he is my kid…there must have been some kind of mix up at the hospital or something.) Instead I got my kids a toy (non Easter related) that I know that they would love and placed it in their Easter basket after they went to bed Saturday night. We didn’t talk about the Easter bunny at all but instead I told him that he would get a special Easter gift…and I tried desperately to relate this to the ultimate gift that Jesus gave us. On Saturday night we made those Easter cookies….the kind that you leave overnight in the oven and that tell the Easter story as you go. I was trying desperately to fill their little heads with the meaning of Easter and not so much about bunnies and gifts and little plastic eggs. And I was just starting to think that I had done it until Sunday morning. Owen woke up and was beyond excited to find a remote control R2D2 in his basket….because nothing says Christ is risen like a new StarWars toy. He looked at me in wonderment and asked me if Santa put it there. I told him “No, not Santa” and told him to try and remember our conversation last night. He sat there and thought for a bit and then got all excited….I could literally see his little light bulb go off….and exclaimed that God did it and that he must have done it because of those cookies we made him. The theology and Santa-cookie confusion were way off, but I just said yes Owen. God must know how much you love Star Wars. We will work on the theology a bit more for next year.
3.And for church. Which was packed. There was no Sunday school so the place was crazy full of kids and they did something out of the norm. And something I love and reminds me of my church growing up. A children’s sermon down at the front. As soon as they asked for the kids to come forward…I pushed my shy little guy out and he not only scurried down the row around the other at least 50 kids that had beat him there and attempted to plop right into the childrens director’s lap. Where he proceeded to tell her in great and enthusiastic detail (and the rest of the packed church) about the dragon movie he saw last night. Because again, nothing says Easter ( well except for Star Wars) like watching a cartoon about training a dragon. He then eyed himself on camera ( we have those big projectors) and proceeded to make funny faces at himself for the rest of the sermon. The only thing that I think might have made it worse was if he had decided to “water” the altar or tell everyone that God brought him a Star Wars toy because he left him some cookies. We might just have to change churches.
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