#interfaithlife:The Easter Edition

This past weekend was one of those weekends where living a Jewish/Christian interfaith life collided, with a major holiday for each faith being celebrated. The Jewish celebration of Passover started on Friday night and it was also Easter weekend. Since I want to go into quite a bit of detail for our second seder, which was led by Dave for our family, I decided to divide our weekend according to holiday. So today you get the Easter edition.

On Good Friday morning we went to church. It was a service focused around extinguishing candles until the sanctuary was dark. It was quite beautiful and Sam made sure he didn't miss a single candle being extinguished.

Since it was (somewhat) pleasant outside, we took down our Christmas decorations. And a bunch of snow melted. On the left is our house on Thursday and on the right is our house on Friday. I really should have taken a picture of our front yard yesterday because we woke up Easter Sunday to snow. Blah. As someone on Facebook commented, we had more snow on Easter than we did at Christmas.

The kids enjoyed riding their various wheeled things.

On Saturday I had almost an hour to myself at Michael's which was heavenly, and I was able to pick up some things for a project I wanted to do on Sunday. Then we went to Tim and Janice's and most of our care group dyed Easter Eggs.

All 48 eggs waiting for the judging. We all voted on which egg we thought should win certain categories, such as "MVE -- Most Valuable Egg," "The Ugliest," "Best Colour," "Most Traditional," and, in a last minute category addition, "Rachel's Favourite." The winners are in pictured in the basket. It was a lot of fun and a tradition which I hope will continue.

Then Tim and Janice gave us the great gift of watching our kids while Dave and I did some grocery shopping. All we had to do in exchange was pick up a few grocery items for them. As parents of young-ish children, doing groceries just the two of us felt like a romantic date!

On Sunday morning, the kids "found" their Easter baskets when we encouraged them to walk into the living room where their baskets were sitting on the couch! Rachel was super excited about her Easter Lego, and Sam was happy to get some chocolate.

We went to church yesterday morning and I think the Easter service is one of my favourite services of the entire church year. Everyone is so happy and we're celebrating such an incredible miracle. Plus, I just love all the Easter hymns.

Yesterday afternoon, I attempted to create a new spring wreath. Yes, I know, I made one last year, but I wasn't very happy with how it turned out. This new one though, I love! It's springy but understated, unlike last year's.

And to end this Easter post, here is a picture of the eggs which our family dyed at the egg dying gathering. Plus one which cracked before it could get coloured.

Our weekend was full but mostly low key, which was exactly what we wanted and needed. However you celebrated, I hope you all had a Happy Easter!