Of Bumps and Bubbles - the follow-up to Easter

Thanks Kylie and Debbie for your comments - you might want to look at my replies in the last post.

Well, that funny collection of things that the children found as their treasure for the egg hunt really did have a purpose, which they were very excited about when they realised what it was. They opened a joint present between them after that which explained all - in leiu of chocolate eggs or whatever! Sarah has struggled with the idea of Easter because of the big deal everyone makes about chocolate eggs, how many they have, etc., so there certainly needed to be something to make it a bit more fun! They didn't get to try it out until two days later though, on the Wednesday.

First let me explain something else...

While I was putting out the treasure hunt on Monday, the back windscreen of the car decided to explode!!! I heard the crash, and various things the children said like,"What happened?", and "How will you go to Coventry tomorrow now the car is broken?!" I was aware SOMETHING had happened, but decided not to investigate until I was finished as we were so late in the day already. I was glad I didn't, as it had given me time to quietly absorb all I was hearing and seeing, and feel sure that whatever needed to happen was best. How wonderful to take that in my stride!

Peter had picked up and thrown a small screwdriver while they were all out in the front of the house with Michael, which had hit the bottom right corner of the windscreen and bounced off. Then a whole minute or so later the glass suddenly exploded in the top left corner of the windscreen and shattered right across it! The two pictures I took of it were among the ones that didn't upload to the computer properly, so I can see them, but you can't! It was quite impressive shattering with a nice huge hole! It made for an interesting evening, as nothing was open, car insurance lines included, and it was clearly going to impact on the next day. We felt it best in the end anyway that Michael would be around the following day so that we could do anything that was needed for Peter's head if he wasn't alright by then. He was, but it still felt needed, and that it would work out somehow.

Michael was meant to be sorting out things in our house in Coventry, the sale of which was completing on the Thursday. He'd been there the previous week, and we'd planned for him to go on the Tuesday and Wednesday of this last week. So it all had to be done on Wednesday instead. It took a long time on the Wednesday to do what was needed, and with help from my Dad and a LOT of help from Michael's brother Tom, it was finally done. Michael and Tom didn't arrive back in Brighton though until early morning, so slept until morning before unloading Tom's van and he was back on his way again - a big thanks to Tom!

While they were busy doing all of that in Coventry on the Wednesday, we were also very busy here. Then having done as many jobs as we had the energy for, we decided it was time to try out the Easter gift. So here it is...

The Bubble Thing!





All of those ingredients together made for an interesting bubble mixture. It wasn't at all the best weather for making big bubbles, especially as it was starting to cool down by that point in the late afternoon. Knowing that though, everyone did pretty well, once we got the hang of it.











Everyone had a go, Peter with assistance as he couldn't manage it on his own. They often popped quite quickly, but some lasted fairly well. It will be fun to try again in warmer weather, or after it rain is meant to be good too, both because of the moisture in the air.

Hannah became the entertainer after a while. She really got the hang of it and was producing bubbles for a while for everyone else to watch and/or pop!













The audience showing their appreciation from up on the balcony!

Our Easter Weekend

On Good Friday this year, we took our family to the chapel in the afternoon and shared an activity that had been a part of the Young Women activity the night before on their mutual night. It was based on the atonement of Jesus Christ, and entailed everyone carrying a backpack in which were placed rocks of varying sizes with different burdens named on them - things that we find hard in our lives, like illnesses, death of loved ones, sins, others treating us badly in different ways, etc. etc. Then we had to make our way to the other end of the corridor, (back to Heavenly Father's presence), but the problem was there were two enormous walls blocking the corridor. Both were made from cardboard boxes (our moving boxes), one representing death, and the second representing spiritual death, or sin.

We went into a few different rooms where we listened to stories and a few scriptures that explain the different things Jesus Christ did that enable us (with his help) to overcome both of these major obstacles. We discussed it so that everybody understood, and understood the relevance to them. At each point there was a beautiful picture of the Saviour representing that part of what he'd done - the resurrection, praying in Gethsemane, etc., and having understood the importance of that part of his sacrifice, we left our relevant burdens with him. The resurrection is free to all on the earth, and so I broke down that wall for everyone to go through. The next wall, everybody had some work to do to help get through that wall. We talked about how repentance erases our sins and Heavenly Father remembers them no more, and so the YW and our family erased the things we'd written that we had done wrong, and left those burdens by the picture of the Saviour in Gethsemane. We also looked at how he suffered for all of our pains, sicknesses, sorrows, temptations, etc. so that he would know how to succor us in our time of need, and were able to leave those last burdens there with the Saviour, feeling no burdens on our backs any more as he was helping to carry our load, just as he can in our lives when we turn to him and ask him for help. Everyone having broken through the last wall, we reached a picture of the Saviour hugging someone on his return back home to Heavenly Father. We thought about what that would feel like if we had followed the Saviour and allowed him to take our burdens from us along the way. It was a special experience bothe that afternoon and the night before with the young women. Then we finished off by watching a video, "The Mediator".

It took a lot longer with our younger family, but helped us to really appreciate the significance of Easter a whole lot more. It was good to use it all again too before having to pack it all away again and take it all back home! It took a lot of preparation time, but was well worth it. :o)

Sunday morning, the sacrament bread was what the young women had also made on the Thursday night. We unfortunately didn't get there in time having been out too late (at the beach!) the night before and everybody being VERY grumpy and late because of it that morning. It was special for those who were there though! In the afternoon, we drew easter pictures and patterns on boiled eggs with wax crayons and then dyed them, and that became part of our lunch the following day. It was a nice time to spend together, and a fairly calm thing to do with everyone being so tired! We also gave the children a couple of books about the Easter story we had acquired some time ago.

Monday is the time we do other things, so that is when we had an egg hunt. It was a treasure hunt again, each child having their own trail of eggs to follow in their own colour. Along the way were some plastic eggs to fill with fruity treasure, and they were all a bit baffled at the end to find their treasure! Unfortunately as I imported all of the photos into our computer this time it came up with a thumbnail of all of them, so I deleted them, but you can't view the best ones, so this is all I have...






They soon understood when they opened a gift that we got for them all to share, but unfortunately we didn't get to try it out right then. It was a bit late anyway by then, but as we looked at it, Peter climbed up onto the stool beside me and promptly fell backwards off it. He got a cut on the back of his head, and was quite upset, so it put an end to everything else for the day/evening. We did open a funny parcel that Granma had sent to us though! Here's what was inside...



... 4 apples to feed to the horses at Stanmer Park!
It was very thoughtful of her, and a fun thing to open in the post (we'd left it a few days to open in its packet as we didn't know if it was for Easter - it smelled very sweetly scented! As the girls know you're not allowed to feed the horses there though, and that we also shouldn't feed apples to a horse without knowing it's personal dietary needs and what else it's been eating, they very quickly decided they'd better eat them instead. It took all of a minute or two for four children to polish them off, surely as fast as a horse would have eaten them!

Easter Weekend

Our weekend was more focused on what happened to the Saviour all that time ago. We obviously didn't have chocolate eggs anyway even though coming up to easter Rebekah apparently though the special day was called Easter Egg Day. As it was our first easter with no sugar or chocolate at all in our diet, I explained that one to her. She soon figured out we could have fun without the chocolate though. It was a bit like Hannah before Christmas not thinking there would be stockings because we weren't eating those things anymore, which is funny because there never was much of that in their stockings anyway, but I guess what was there stood out as the highlight to her! Anyway, we figured that we'd prefer to have all of our easter fun on the Monday, and leave Easter Sunday to be a focus on the Saviour, which was fine with the children too. The girls did all wear matching purple dresses that we found greatly reduced last week. They were excited to all match. I didn't think to take a picture, but they all chose white tights, long white top. and black shoes to go with their dresses. Only their hair, height I suppose, and length of dresses (it only went up to age 7-8 for Rachel and Hannah instead of 8-9 or 9-10, so their dresses were shorter in comparison - still way worth it for them though!) could give them away. Several people at church get them mixed up anyway, so that probably didn't help! I know some people think it's fun to have siblings matching, others avoid it totally, but our girls are always wanting to (even with the oldest nearly 9 and the youngest not quite 4) so this was their chance.

On Monday, we had our Family Home Evening in the afternoon as we tend to do, and that consisted of the following:

Song and prayer
Lesson: reading what happened in the Saviour's life up until his ascension into heaven
Learning part of a new song
Refreshments: pancakes, and a fruit flower
Activities: 1 - Decorating the bags the girls received from Will, Trisha, Naomi and Lydia for Christmas (finally)!

Here's a picture of their bags once decorated - they finally shared the flowers all out in arrangements that everyone was happy with. Peter has one of Rachel's bags that he has become especially attached to(!) and Daddy has the easter bunny who is about to start their egg hunt:



2 - Using their newly-decorated bags to collect with, an Easter treasure hunt (clues on paper eggs, and some plastic ones to find along the way filled with grapes, a plum and some money, and a surprise gift at the end. They each had their own trail to follow around the house (a different colour to find for each person), so people were running here there and everwhere for a while, especially once they got the hang of only picking up their own colour!
3 - Each planting their own herb to care for (a part of their gift at the end)
More singing and a prayer.

We lasted most of the afternoon and had a lot of fun. It's really what we'd have done out of a family home "evening" anyway, but gathering it all together was more fun in a way.


I thought you might enjoy these clips too. When they decorated their paper eggs on Saturday, Hannah helped Peter do a few. Those two always have a lot of fun together. Hannah is fantasic with Peter - she loves to get him doing things, has great fun playing with him, and always knows just how to get him involved. At tea on Saturday because they had spent so much time together (and she'd dished up his food to cool on his plate while we got everyone to the table) Peter wouldn't accept his plate of food when I gave it to him. He frowned and pushed it away, and then took it happily and started eating when Hannah then handed it to him! Cheeky boy. He was obviously enjoying his Hannah time immensely. :o) Anyway, this happened while Rachel and I were in the dining room sticking the last bits of paper onto eggs. The paper cuttings started off in a little pile! ... Oh, and you get to see the lovely gaps where Hannah's teeth are growing too!