We started our Easter doings just over a week before, with an Easter egg hunt at our church. The event started with all the kids coming into the sanctuary to sing along with a couple of kids' praise music videos that are favorites on Wednesday night. The leader invited any kids who wanted to, to come up on stage and help lead the singing. Esther was one of the first ones up, and boy, did she get into it! I wasn't able to get any really good pictures, but the one below will give you an idea of how she was dancing. The child was airborne! (One of the other kids told her afterwards, "You did good, Esther!")
The eggs had to be hunted indoors, as the ground was sopping wet outside. Esther's age group went first to the gym, where eggs were simply scattered across the floor and they all ran around like maniacs picking up as many as they could. Then they were let into the kitchen were eggs were a little more creatively distributed. I had picked out a not-too-big bucket for Esther, somewhat on purpose since I didn't want her inundated with sugar, so she got maybe twenty eggs. Some other kids had more like 40--yikes! She was satisfied with what she had, and willingly shared some of the eggs that were threatening to overflow her basket with a toddler.
After the egg hunt, we all re-convened in the sanctuary to watch a children's Bible version of the first Easter, which I thought was quite well done. We finished up with a pizza lunch. The next day, when I was on nursery duty, I (or rather, the babies) found four overlooked eggs in the nursery.
On Palm Sunday, she enjoyed waving palm branches and saying "Hosanna!" The next few days we read through the story of Jesus' last week (on earth) in a children's Bible several times. Esther had evidently been through the story in our church's children's program as well, in some detail--she kept asking me why people put thorns on Jesus' head and there was blood running down his face. The children's Bible was a little graphic as well, and one morning she told me she had had a bad dream that "bad guys cut Jesus into pieces and he said 'Wah.'" After that I backed off a little on the reading.
I already posted about coloring Easter eggs and our Seder at church, so I won't repeat that here. She got to do a second Easter egg hunt at her story hour on Friday, this one outside. She also got to color some more eggs!
On Saturday evening, we went through our set of "Resurrection eggs" with her. This is a set of twelve plastic Easter eggs, each of which has some symbol in it to remind the viewer of Jesus' last week. For example, the first egg has a little plastic donkey because Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. The last egg is empty, because Jesus' tomb was empty on Easter morning. We let Esther open each egg and tell us what was inside and what it had to do with Jesus. She knew a lot of them, and had fun discovering what was inside each one.
On Easter morning, Tim and I both had parts in our church's early service drama. Tim had a monologue as Malchus, the servant of the high priest whose ear was cut off by Peter. Esther did not care for hearing him talk in first person about his ear being cut off! I had a short monologue as Mary Magdalene, after she had encountered the risen Jesus. One of the last lines in my monologue was, "Jesus is alive!!" Esther was much impressed, and has been asking me periodically ever since, "Why did you wear that thing [scarf] on your head and say 'Jesus is alive!'" In the actual service, right after my monologue, I was to walk over to one of the windows, which we had covered with a thick material, rip the material off to let the light shine in, and proclaim, "He is risen!" Then the rest of the cast members and other volunteers ripped the material off of the other windows. In the middle of the excitement, I heard a little voice from the second row (where Esther was sitting with family friends) exclaim, "He is risen! Jesus is alive!" Then the worship leader went up on stage and said, "Hallelujah," and Esther shouted back, "Hallelujah!!" Ordinarily I don't want my child to be loud in church, but under the circumstances it was very appropriate. After the dramatic first service, we had an all-church Easter breakfast and then a more standard second service.
Esther wore a silky pink qipao (a traditional Chinese style) with a floral pattern. She did not want to be subjected to a photo shoot. The picture below is the best one I was able to get. (Yes, she is wearing her rain boots!)
After her nap, she hunted for her Easter basket, finally finding it inside our recycle containers.
We ended the day by having friends over for Easter dinner in the early evening (which turned out to be lateish evening, since our downstairs refrigerator is apparently set too cold and the turkey didn't thaw as it should have). But the food all tasted good when it was done, and meantime Esther and her little friend had had a blast running through our new play sprinkler, and the grown-ups had enjoyed chatting outside on a very warm spring day. So all in all, we had a really nice Easter!
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