Easter Basket Day!

March 25th was a warm sunny day so we decided it would be a good day to have our new Easter Basket Day (which next year will become Spring Basket Day). Six Easter baskets seems like a lot. A lot to buy, a lot of candy and a lot of little junkie toys cluttering the house, which I'm trying really hard to get rid of. Also waiting until Easter day, which is usually busy enough and raining is not an ideal time to go hunting for Easter baskets. While it's a fun tradition, that's really all it is. It doesn't have any spiritual meaning for the kids to take away, and really it takes away from the meaning of Easter - the day Jesus rose from the dead. I don't want any of our holidays to take away from the true worship of God. If we can add to it, great, but I don't want to take away from the important times He gives us to worship Him.

I also don't like how when we give the kids something it becomes "mine" instead of "ours". Teaching our kids that everything we have is actually the Lord's and He shares it with us is hard. So one big basket that we all share was an important lesson to create out of this also. Finding and opening the Easter basket is now becoming a time to thank God for His creation of changing seasons, welcome the Spring time and share. And since Spring began on March 20th - it fit right in!

I spent a lot of time explaining how we were going to have one big family basket this year, and the reasons why, but old traditions are hard to give up. This was kind of a hard transition for Kivi. She was used to her own basket and the old way. So while I did lots of preparing them that it would be different this year it was still a little tough. The others were really accepting of this new concept though and Peter tried to make it even more fun for the bigs by doing a picture scavenger hunt to the basket.

We dressed the kids up in their Dedication/Easter Basket/Easter clothes which I'm going to get my money's worth out of because we bought them new, which I never do! Peter gave Opie the first clue and off they went!

Berg loves going outside now and wants his "suice on, SUICE ON!" so he can go out all the time. He was in heaven following the big kids all over the yard.

It was actually a lot harder to find the close up shots Dada took than we thought it would be. I didn't even know where half of them were. They finally found the clue that led them to the bike trailer:

which led them to the Basket! It was filled with Bendaroos, Playdough, Silly putty, super hero figures, a baby doll for the bath, cookies, candy, tic tacs and dried apples.

It was big so they they were pretty excited.

Then we took our traditional Easter Basket Picture. They don't all fit like they did in years past, but they are all happy so that's even better!

2012

And now a glimpse at the giant Easter basket's past.

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004