This Sunday is Easter, so I thought today would be a good day to share our Easter traditions with you! I love celebrating Easter because it is the most important religious holiday that we, as Christians, celebrate. Easter is a time that celebrates our rebirth, Jesus giving up his life for our sins, and God's unfailing love for us! That's a pretty amazing celebration, don't you think?! It's also just a beautiful time of year for gorgeous weather, and everything is always blooming and beautiful!
Growing up, our Easter's were almost always the same. A few days before Easter we would spend a couple of hours decorating and dying Easter eggs...
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| Am I the only one that would go nuts with the stickers and magic crayon that only showed up after you dyed the eggs??? |
On Easter itself we would get up early, and the Easter bunny would have brought us an Easter basket filled with little candies and gifts (I remember getting a lot of stuffed animals and baby dolls when I was little!). After checking out our baskets, we would hunt Easter eggs in the backyard. My parents backyard has lot of trees and flowerbeds, so it made for some really good egg hidey-holes! :) I even remember a couple of Easter's when our neighbors joined in the egg hunt, and we got to run around both yards looking for eggs! It was intense! After our egg hunt, we would all go to church, then go out to a fun restaurant for Easter brunch! Some years we would cook a big Easter lunch at home, but especially when my sister and I got older we became the "holiday meals at restaurants" type of people. It was always fun to get dressed up and go out to a nice restaurant for Easter and Christmas, so that's what we did!
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| My sister, Johnathon, and I out for Easter lunch-Easter 2013 |
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| My sister and I before Easter 2013 in my parents front yard (my hair has never had that much bounce since!) |
Since living on Kwaj we have added some new and fun Easter traditions that we really love! Kwaj puts on a sunrise service at the beach every Easter Sunday. Everyone gets up crazy early for a 6:30am service, followed by a pot luck breakfast on the beach, and Baptisms in the ocean. Here are some pictures of our first Easter on Kwaj at the sunrise service:
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| Johnathon and I- Easter 2014 |
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| My good friend Sarah and I after the Easter service- 2014 |
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| Watching the baptisms in the lagoon after the service |
Last year we had just gotten back on island with newborn Hadley, and the idea of getting us all up and ready for a sunrise service was just too much for this mama! Johnathon and I did a little bible study at home instead, then celebrated with an Easter dinner at the Country Club with our group of friends. The dinner was lovely, but the Country Club is a pretty far bike ride from our house so I couldn't run home and nurse Hadley when she got hungry. I was still pretty bad at the whole "breastfeeding in public" thing, and I remember hiding out on the upstairs balcony trying to get a crying Hadley to latch, and being wildly unsuccessful. I spent the rest of the meal holding Hadley and trying to get her to fall asleep. Lol #newmomstruggles
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| The only photographic evidence of Easter 2015. Awesome. |
Also, I didn't get Hadley an Easter basket last year. Oops. The thing is...she was eight weeks old, I was overwhelmed, and she wasn't going to remember it anyway. Needless to say, I'm ready for an Easter do over this year! We aren't going to the sunrise service, but thankfully the church on island is kind enough to offer a respectable 11am service time, so we are going to church as a family, then watching our friend's son Kellen get baptized! We are doing another Easter dinner at the Country Club with our friends, and I have high hopes that this year will go better than last year! Plus, our friend Chamee is making her famous deviled eggs, so that pretty much guarantee's the dinner will rock! ;)
For those of you wondering what is in Hadley's Easter basket this year...
Her big ticket items are The Jesus Storybook Bible (which is currently on sale on Amazon!!), and some Robeez bunny slippers that make me squeal with delight every time I see them! Johnathon also got her some bubbles and new bath toys while he was in Hono!
So that's the McClellan family Easter traditions! I would love to hear about your traditions, and I hope everyone has a wonderful Easter holiday!
Our church does a sunrise service, too! I am so excited. But a sunrise service on the beach, potluck breakfast and baptisms in the ocean sounds amazing. Love that lace dress! We have that Jesus Storybook Bible and love it. I am so glad you posted about that because I just remembered I bought Mason a bible and didn’t have it in my Easter basket post. It was still in my Hobby Lobby bag with the St Patricks Day stuff and I would have forgotten about it! The most important thing I could give him! Shame on me. Those slippers are precious. Hope y’all have an amazing Easter!
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