Easter!

Easter came early this year. I'm not super fond of it being at the end of March because it tends to be cold. Even though it was cold, we were up very early to see if the Easter Bunny had hopped into our house. He had and Emily was thrilled with what he got her. Mostly toys because she can be hyper enough without a lot of sugar.

After checking out what the bunny brought, it was time to get ready for church. Emily looked like a princess in her lovely yellow dress. We left to get to church early with Emily's new monster dolls in tow.

We got our normal seats which was nice though the church started filling up around us. Even for 8:30 service, most of the pews were filled. The service was lovely. Emily got to see her friends, and they were all lovely and cute. Especially at the children's message as Vicar Gregg asked the kids what their favorite holiday was. Emily is always very vocal during the children's message and it's always super cute.

At the end of the service, the choir and whoever wants to join in sang The Hallelujah Chorus. I love singing this! It's one of my favorite parts of Easter.

After church, we all piled into the car and started driving to GA. We don't have a lot of relatives around here. Todd's aunt lives two hours away. My aunt, uncle and my cousins live about three hours away. We try and visit when we can. 

All of my four cousins are married with kids. And quite of few of those kids are Emily's age. She

loves going to GA to play with her cousins. My aunt really went all out with a great meal - ham, of course. She also came up with a really creative Easter Egg hunt.

Instead of just looking for eggs around the house. She put the name of each kid on a series of eggs. They got a clue to look to begin with from her and then had to follow the clues around the house. Emily had a great time - though I had to run around with her since her reading levels aren't super great yet so I had to read the clues.

At the end, they had to give my aunt a hug and they got a small bag full of goodies. Emily got candy and a small cat stuffed animal that she loved! 

It was a nice gathering of family. I got to talk about Disney World since once of my cousin's is going next month and had some questions. So that was an extra treat.

Even though the ride is very long - three hours there and back. It's really worth it to be able to spend time with family for Easter.

Know We Are Christians By Our Love

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There has been a hymn that has been running through my head for a while now. It's a beautiful hymn that I sang in church many times as a child.

“They will know we are Christians by our love...”

Sadly it seems in this world, people know Christians not by our love but by our intolerance. I'm very thankful that my church which is a member of The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is very tolerant. ELCA by a whole is welcoming to LGBTQ people. Each church has to decide on their own if they want to perform same sex marriages, a vote that overwhelming passed in favor of at a meeting not that long ago in my congregation.

With the decision out of Indiana this week, it seems like intolerance is still alive and well. Against gay and trans people, against people of color and of women. As same sex marriage is sweeping the nation, some people seem to want to hold on to their prejudices. I don't think that is what Jesus wanted us to do.

Right before the school year started, our church gave all the kids going into Kindergarten a story Bible, including Emily. We've been reading a story or two out of it nearly every night since she got it. We actually finished the Bible last night and are going to start from the beginning at Emily's request.

As I have been reading these stories with her, I'm stuck by the kind of person Jesus is. He hung out with people who many thought were undesirable. And he showed them love. Being loving and kind and caring is what Jesus and God want us to do.

People are people, and they should be treated with respect. Some people might live their lives in a way you don't agree with, but we aren't here to judge other people. Yes, we may judge other people but that's because we are all flawed humans. We are all sinners – something I think some Christians forget.

I have friends of all types and I love them all. We are friends because of similar interests and I'm not going to judge them or think they are wrong for living their lives they way they do. I feel as long as you aren't an axe murderer or abusive, you are good. Yes, some people are different religions or don't have a religion at all. Some have differences in sexual orientation or don't fit with the gender they were born with. None of these things make someone a bad person or in the need of saving. We just need to love them as Jesus loves us. 

Today is Maundy Thursday, the day of the Last Supper. Tomorrow is Good Friday, the day Jesus died for us. I feel like he would open his arms and love everyone. A lot of so called Christians out there remind me of the Priests and Pharisees who ended up killing Jesus.

As I finish my personal walk through holy week, I pray that tolerance can become the norm someday. People can get so caught up in hate for some reason, but love can be so much more powerful and so much more rewarding. And maybe someday again people will know Christians for our love.

April Fools

Image: www.altiusdirectory.com 

I'm not a big fan of today's 'holiday'. I don't like pranks. Even though some are innocent, a lot are mean spirited. Since the advent of the internet and especially social media, April Fools Day has taken on a whole new meaning.

We now get fake pregnancy announcements and posts about how beloved shows are coming back for new seasons. It's basically become "Don't Believe Anything Posted On The Internet" Day.

For me, it just isn't fun. I may be being a wet blanket but it's just not something I'm into. For me, I'm more into thinking about Easter. It's Holy Week and I've been thinking a lot about Jesus' sacrifice and what it means to be a Christian (which will be a whole other post).

If you want to prank someone, please be kind. Otherwise, good luck to everyone today!

Easter

We had a busy Easter weekend but it was a good holiday for us. On Saturday evening, we colored eggs. We didn't make a ton of them because we don't eat hard boiled eggs that much. But Emily likes it so I wanted to do some.

Todd's cousin had given us a no mess egg dying kit. It was a little messy, in part because I didn't drain enough water out of it. Emily just plopped the eggs in, and then I took them out. It wasn't as fun because you really couldn't do more than one color on an egg.

The next morning, Emily woke up a little after six am. I had been awake for a while because I had been listening for her. I wanted to stop her from going into the living room without me because I wanted to tape her reaction of seeing her basket.

We went a little overboard this year with stuff for the basket. We generally give more presents and less candy because a sugared up Emily is not a good thing. She had really wanted a Doc McStuffins lab coat for a long time so that was the big thing I got her. Todd ended up picking up some Infinity figures. He thought she'd ignore the lab coat, but she's played with it every day since Sunday.

After she found all the goodies in her basket it was time to go to church. I love Easter services - lots of singing and it's very festive. My favorite part comes at the end where everyone is invited to join the church in singing the Hallelujah Chorus.

Once we were done with church, we headed out to drive to GA. My aunt and uncle live outside of Atlanta and we often go there for holidays because my cousins all have kids, some around Emily's age. It was nice to see relatives and everyone remarked on how skinnier Todd looks - one of my cousin's wives didn't even recognize him at first!

We had a great meal and Emily had fun playing with her cousins. We were on the road longer than we were at my aunt and uncle's house, but it was worth it to see family for the holiday.

Holy Week Services

Easter 2011

Holy Week is a big deal in the Lutheran church. We do extra services throughout the week to mark the different parts of Jesus' Passion at my church.

On Thursday we had a Maundy Thursday service that had a worship meal. Emily and I went and we sat for supper with Emily's best friend from school and her family. The meal was really good and it was nice to have some fellowship time. We did communion with the bread before dinner and the wine after, just like Jesus did on that day all those years ago.

The service was nice, but it was really hard for Emily and her friend to stay completely silent since they are five (at least Emily is). By the end, Emily's friend's mom offered to take the girls out. They are generally quiet in church but when they are together they tend to get a little loud.

Todd had yesterday off from work, and let me go to church by myself for Good Friday service. There were a few kids there, but mostly adults because it's another 'be completely silent' kind of service. Good Friday is always a really intense service for me - to think that Jesus went through that pain and agony of dying on the cross to save us from sin can be really overwhelming.

I admit that I got very teary-eyed from the beginning. I felt the presence of God very strongly through the service so it was very powerful for me. But I think that Emily would have been either completely overwhelmed or just really bored.

Our church has done an Easter Vigil service on Easter Saturday before but not this year. So we just have Easter Sunday service tomorrow. It is will be a lovely finish to Holy Week.

The Egg Hunt of DOOM!

I like taking Emily to the free activities around town that pop up around the holidays.  We did several for Halloween and a couple for Christmas. Now that it's Easter, I wanted to take her to the egg hunt at Carrier Park in Asheville.

It has been quite a few years since we got to go to this particular event and I didn't realize what a mob scene it was going to be. The shindig started at 2 but I didn't get out of work until 1:30. Since the park is in Asheville we didn't get there until about 3 pm.

We had a hard time finding a parking spot and ended up parking about a mile away. I had my phone with me so I turned it on my Runkeeper app. It was .93 miles from our car to the park. The walk there wasn't too bad, especially because Emily was excited.

She had a great time while we were there. She got to meet the Easter Bunny and the Bojangles Chicken. She got to play in some bounce houses as well. It was really warm on Saturday and they ran out of drinks, so by the time 4 pm rolled around and it was time for the egg hunt itself, Emily was pooped.

She did do the hunt and got 4 eggs. The nice thing was that they also gave each of the kid's a goodie bag as they left. So even if your kid didn't a ton of eggs (or any), they would get something.

Then came the Doom part of the day - the walk back to the car. It was tiring for me and Todd, but you would have thought we were killing Emily. We had told her that we weren't going to carry her back and she said she'd walk. And she did walk back the whole way.

Afterwards, we were hot, tired and sweaty. So we went to get ice cream at our favorite ice cream place, The Hop. It was super busy there too but soon we had our ice cream and got to relax for a bit.

Both Todd and I decided that we weren't going to do that particular egg hunt again. There just isn't enough parking to handle the crowds.

Spring Has Sprung!

After the horrible winter we had, I am very glad that spring has finally arrived to my part of NC. The weather has been nice enough that we can go outside and enjoy our yard again.

Yesterday, Emily rode her bike around the neighborhood while I walked with her. Then she played on her swing set for a while I soaked up the sunshine.

Today we'll be going to Carrier Park in Asheville to take part in the Easter Eggstravaganza - Emily is really looking forward to it. And thankfully the weather will be beautiful out.

Spring isn't my favorite season - my seasonal allergies get really bad in the spring. But after the long, cold winter it's a welcome change.