Easter Festivities Day 4-Passover Meal and the Easter Story

On Good Friday, we had our own Passover Feast and taught the children why this one meal is referred to as:
1. A Passover Feast
2. The Last Supper
3. The First Sacrament

That's a lot of meals to remember for a little kid, you know? But they enjoyed talking about the meaning of all three while we munched our lamb kebobs, olives and unleavened bread. Apparently, we were so hungry and so enthralled by our food that I completely forgot to document this part with pictures! :( (I'm a little sad because I forgot last year, also.)


They loved dinner and right after it was over, we had our activity: Resurrection Eggs.



Basically, each egg holds an object that relates a short scripture that you read. You match everything up, telling the whole story of Easter in the process. For example, one egg holds a thorns, one holds a cross, cloves for spices, a chunk of soap, etc... The last egg is empty, just like the tomb!
Our lesson was a tiny bit different, but here is a link to a similar activity if you are interested: Easter Egg Lesson.
We finished things off with some Resurrection Rolls brought by our sweet Home Teacher! They are sweet and yummy and hollow inside!

Easter Festivities Day 3: Love One Another

Last year, we tried to do ALL of the Last Supper activities in one night, adn it was just too much for the kids. So, we decided that since they are still young, we could simplify our activities by spreading things out a bit and not doing too much in one day. This works out great, because we can just add lots of other excellent activities later on as they get older! So, for day three, we focused on Christ's teachings at The Last Supper.

Scripture Reading: John 13:1-30 (we read a few verses and summarized the rest- Tori can't handle much more than that!)
(Sure it's a little out of order- but I'm okay with that!) Above you can see the girls listening to the lesson.
We taught them about Christ's teachings on Service. The Early Childhood Advocate in me loves that He uses the firt step to modifing behavior, which is to model the appropriate behavior. Not that Christ fits into our little box of classifications, but that teaching by modeling is a pattern set by Christ.

Sorry... I'll stop that now.

Obviously, for our activity, we washed eachother's feet. The kids LOVED this, of course, and insisted on washing our feet, too.
We finished things off with some Easter Rice Krispie Treats!

(courtesy of a Teacher Appreciation gift I received at school that day!)

Easter Festivities Day 2: Finding Faith in Christ

On Day 2, there were technical difficulties.


My schedule went crazy and then our tv wouldn't work, which was unfortunate since our activity was a movie.


So, on Day 3, we watched our movie together!

We watched Finding Faith in Christ,
which is a 30 minute movie about the life, miracles, atonement and resurrection of the Savior.
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It is told from the perspective of Thomas, who shares how he gained faith in the Lord Jesus. We love this movie and it was just the right amount of intensity and length for our kids. Isaac and Daphne really loved it and we had a good discussion afterward!

Easter Week Festivities- Day One The Triumphal Entry

This was by far the best Easter on record for the Hunter family! I am certain that it is because we were able to focus on the Savior more and prepare spiritually this year, and I'm so excited that it was a good learning experience for all of us.

We actually started this tradition last year, but April is a completely crazy month for me, so I wasn't able to blog any of it... and we also were only able to do 3 activities instead of a whole week's worth! Basically, in an attempt to make our Easter focused on the Savior, we decided to have an Easter FHE every night before Easter. We just have a simple lesson, activity and a treat, and I hope we are adding little drops of oil into their lamps of testimony and opening their hearts to the Spirit of God.

Our lesson for the first night was on the Triumphal Entry. We read the story:

Scripture Reading: Mark 11:1-10

Then, the kids made palm branches out of green construction paper. (Tori is obsessed with cutting right now, so this was even fun for her! Although, she mostly just made green confetti)

Then, we dressed them up and let them act out the scene of His entry!

As Isaac was marching in on his donkey, Tori walked up to him and said, "Hello Jesus. My name is Mary."!

At this point, we were trying to guide Isaac and Daphne through the re-enactment, and Tori just fell down on the ground (with no direction) and shouted, "Hosanna, Hosanna!"

It was very simple, but they loved it and I think we can add more and make variations on the activity as they get older.

How cute are they?

Guess What Daphne Did At School TODAY?!

Well, she got bangs. Not at school, but... something happened at school that necessitated the bangs. There was much drama and many tears on her part, so I won't go into details. But I think the finished look is pretty cute!

GiGi Comes to Town!

Back in March, we had a wonderful visit from my Mom, also known as GiGi!

Matt was out of town that week, so it was incredibly helpful to have my Mom around for company and help with my three little munchkins.

I think one of the most notable events of this week is that Victoria embraced my Mom whole-heartedly this visit. In general, Tori has been pretty slow to warm to new situations, new people, etc. Last visit, she started warming up to Mom the day before she left. So, it was both exciting and relieving to see her jump right in GiGi's lap!

We did lots of fun things with Mom, including our first trip to the park for the Spring! Yay!

We had so much fun with GiGi! I was so very grateful for all of her help that week. When I dropped Mom off at the airport, Tori cried and cried, "I need GiGi! I miss GiGi!" So, we miss you, GiGi! We can't wait to see you this Summer!

The Tree House

I wrote this post a long time ago... I'm not sure how it didn't get published!

While GiGi was visiting, I let the kids stay home from school one day so we could take them to The Treehouse! We LOVE the Treehouse, we held a Family Membership when we lived up that way. Since we moved a little more South, we haven't visited as much, so we were thrilled to see some of the new exhibits.
Since Tori is still two and not really big on delayed gratification, we of course had to stop right at the beginning for the Big Fire Truck: "I'm a Ballerina Firefighter!"

One of the new exhibits is the Pioneer Days section! For those of you who ain't from around here, Pioneer Day is an actual State Holiday here in Utah. It is also referred to as the 24th of July. In the Summer and early Fall, you'll see all kinds of celebrations around here that celebrate the settling of Utah as well as local crops, harvests, etc. There are Cherry Days, Swiss Days, Peach Days, Liberty Days, etc... You get the point. Anyway, so for this section of the Museum, they have all kinds of farming exhibits, this was my favorite:

Yep- there is actual liquid coming out of that cow! I'm hoping that it was just water, but I didn't taste it to check.

The bucket beneath has some fake foamy stuff that you squirt the water into.

The kids had SO much fun here!

Just outside this area is the Rodeo section, where they can pretend ride on these horses!

We stopped by the old-fashioned school house, which has always been one of Daphne's favorites. I will tell you that it appears they did away with the pointy DUNCE hat they used to keep in the corner!

This is a little tunnel that runs through the German house:

Sampling some Sushi in Japan:

Here we have another new exhibit, the Mongolian House. I cannot remember any of the interesting facts that I read about Mongolia. Which is sad. And Pathetic.

I guess it wasn't a very educational experience for me.

This is a little play place where they can pretend to have a ranch in Australia, I think. I really learned a lot on this trip.

The English house, where the kiddos got to have a Beatrix Potter tea party!

This entire area is sort of a Medieval/Royal/Castle kind of place. There is a stage where you can put on a show:

A throne where the unimpressed queen can sit to watch the show:

You can see the stage a little better in this one:

In the same area, there is a giant Chess Board! Tori thought you were supposed to dance with all the pieces. Isaac spent a good deal of the morning destroying a little kid sat chess. As I mentioned, we let him stay home from school, so pretty much all the kids there were at least Kindergarten age or younger. Isaac did not let the little guy have a chance! :(

We also made a little stop by the oval office:

Here is a ship to take you across the sea to America. And, yes I did have to do some deep breathing to squelch the anxiety over whether or not there might be lice in that hat. I did okay, but it wasn't easy. We survived with no bugs! And isn't she a cute Pioneer?!

There is a whole Doctor's Office Exhibit with babies to treat and cuddle!

Daphne and Tori had so much fun at this exhibit!

Here they are in the music room:

And another little stop by the Native American Teepee:

We LOVE the Treehouse, and it was such a fun outing we got to do with our GiGi! On the way out, we dropped by Farr's for some ice cream and as soon as we drove away, Tori said, "I want to go to the Treehouse again!" Thanks, GiGi, for treating us to a fun day!

It's A Wolf Thing

So... if you didn't read Twilight, that may not be funny. But I personally find it humorous to make the connection between my gargantuan boys and the wolves in that series.
And now that I have completely embarrassed myself:

This is waaaaaay old news, but Isaac received his Wolf Award in Scouts!

He actually completed all of these requirements back in the beginning of February, but they weren't able to give him the award until March. And I wasn't able to blog about it until, drumroll, please!.... May!


It is at this point of the post that I make a confession, something a little worse than the fact that I am a perpetually tardy blogger:
Shhhh... Don't tell anyone, but I'm scared of Scouts!

I'm not afraid of the actual boyscouts themselves, I'm just afraid of the requirements, the process, the uniforms, sewing on the patches, etc...

Honestly, I had NO idea what we were signing up for last February when Isaac turned 8.

So, all year long I just put off even cracking the book open to look at it. We got his bobcat requirements done and then I just sort of... tabled it. I was just sure we would open it up and the first page would read, "Sew a tent by hand and then sleep in it outside in the mountains." Or something like that. And we all know that when you give a task like that to an 8 year old boy, the person who really ends up doing the work is his mom. And if we are being brutally honest, I don't even sew the buttons back on our shirts. Matt does that.
And I certainly don't.... CAMP.
So, I just kept putting it off, hoping that he would eventually complete the activities during Den Meetings (or whatever you call that weekly meeting I take him to!) But in early January, I got an email from one of the Den Mothers (or whatever you call them!) saying that it was crunch time and we really needed to buckle down if he was to complete his wolf by the time he turned 9 next month.
Sigh.
Oh, fine.

So I put on my good mother hat, and opened the book. And you know what?
It wasn't that bad.
He had actually completed 85% of the requirements just through things we naturally do as a family or projects he has worked on with Matt. So, we buckled down and completed the last few assignments and, Voila! He was a Wolf!

So, the fact that they put a little pin on the Mother to give her an award as well as the Scout may have been a little undeserved on my part.

I know I make it sound inconsequential, but it really is quite an accomplishment. If you look at all of the activities laid out together, it really is a big accomplishment. And he did more than was necessary, earning a few extra silver arrows! What a great boy!

We sat down and made a goal to complete the Bear requirements by the end of the Summer so that we don't have the same January Mad Rush again.

At the end of Pack Meeting, they had some fun activities, and the boys were put into teams and had to climb this rope.

Those gargantuan genes I mentioned previously sure do come in handy sometimes!

He wasted them! Okay, maybe that's not a very "Scout Mom" thing to say, but it's true!! And I never asked to be a Scout Mom anyway!

After the boys got done, Daphne gave it a try. I think this inspired her to become a monkey climber (you'll see in a post to come soon)!

We had a great night and we are so proud of our boy! Really, it is so impressive that he accomplished this task in spite of his City-girl, Prissy, Shopping, Anti-Camping Mom. My goal is to be more proactive and supportive during the year of the Bear, and I think we are well on our way!