Easter 2014

The Sunday before Easter is known as Palm Sunday (something I was completely unaware of until last year!). It marks the beginning of "Holy Week" (the week leading up to Easter Sunday), and is a day that helps us remember the Savior's triumphant entrance into Jerusalem before the Passover feast, just a few short days before He suffered for the atonement in the Garden of Gethsemane and was crucified and resurrected. 

I was able to find so many great ideas for celebrating Holy Week which would be great opportunities to teach our children about the significance of the atonement and Christ's death and resurrection.

For Palm Sunday, the girls cut out palm leaves to lay on the ground and to wave in the air, and we read the story of Christ's entry into Jerusalem from the Bible and, of course, acted

 it out. Which just wouldn't be complete without a Daddy donkey to ride.

We did several other Holy Week activities throughout the week, though none of them are documented because we are awesome at taking pictures like that. :) This being my very first attempt at any kind of Holy Week celebrations, you can be assured that there will definitely be more where that came from next year!

We are still not 100% on this, but since I hate the idea of commercializing spiritual holidays (there is no Easter Bunny at our house!), this year we toyed with the idea of doing a "secular Saturday" and then a "spiritual Sunday"... where all things Easter egg decorating, Easter egg hunts, presents and candy related are done on Saturday (though still with taught symbolism), so when the Sabbath morning arrives- the day we really focus on the resurrection of Christ- there are less distractions and we can really focus on the true spirit of the day. We will probably continue this tradition in the future- probably just minus presents. 

But in any case, the girls got a few small treats from Grandma and Grandpa Willman (Grandma had been in town just a couple of weeks earlier), and they were very happy to open those on Saturday morning:

On Sunday they wore their new Easter clothes (Thank you Grandma and Grandpa Murphy!):

It was such a fun and spiritually uplifting week for our family. I truly love being able to see our children's knowledge and testimony of their Savior, and all that He has done for them, grow! Happy Easter!