easter! and our news...

the news is...we are moving! to the state of south carolina. we have never been there and certainly never considered living there...to be honest, we've never really given that state much thought. but now, here we are...looking up things to see and do, looking for housing, and imagining our life there. jeremy will be doing a fifteen month program to become a chaplain. it is all quite exciting. and the logistics are quite stressful. we have known for about six weeks. six weeks that have been filled with caring for two kids while cleaning/purging/organizing, pricing moving trucks, prepping our house to go on the market (which will officially happen next week), and jeremy working more than full time at his current job. it's been crazy over here. only to get more crazy once the house is actually on the market and has to be ready for showings at any time!

anyway, in the midst of all of that, i realized the other day that i haven't done any preparations for easter! i know that love can understand the basic idea of easter and decided to look for a book that we could read with her that would help her understand. i was surprised and disappointed to find that the selection of children's books about easter seems quite small and lacking. it's surprising, considering the significance of the holiday in our lives. anyway...after feeling quite inspired to write and publish an easter book myself (since i have so much spare time these days), i finally settled on a book.

i chose "easter surprise", a lift the flap board book, by howie and maclean. i am quite happy with this book...it is an accurate telling of the easter story beginning with palm sunday, it doesn't get into the gory details, but it does say that Jesus died and shows the three crosses from far away. the people aren't white with blue eyes, and it's fun for kids to lift the flaps as the story is read. love really enjoys the book as well.

we also got a set of resurrection eggs this year. i was going to make my own, but i was having trouble finding some of the pieces to put in the eggs, and i just didn't feel like it was coming together nicely...so i decided to purchase a set that we can use for the future as well. the eggs came with a little booklet, so love and i went through it together earlier today. she really enjoyed opening the eggs and finding what part of the story was inside each one. we will probably continue to use this over the next week or two and then we will stash it away for next year's use.

we have a "way of light" wreath, which can be used for both advent and lent. i didn't get it out for lent this year though...maybe next year.

does anyone who reads this have any other books to recommend? how do you observe lent and easter in your home with little ones? any suggestions for us?