Camp News. . . and any other "news": Easter and Traditions

I love Easter! It's certainly my favorite Sunday morning of the year! And even though church was great today (I cried my way through baptisms and praise dances and the reminder that the same power that raised Jesus from the dead is at work in me!!) ... I was missing my family and Paul Baptist and the traditions of Easters past. Here are 10 of my favorite reasons to love Easter:

1 - Easter Nests
On Easter Eve we always made Easter nests. Us kids would get a kitchen towel and fold it up into a nest and place it by our bedroom doors. Then "the easter bunny" would come in the night and lay easter eggs and candy and toys and coloring books and bubble gum in our nests. We used to put fake grass in the nests until we realized the hassle of getting our jelly beans back out of that static electricity mess. Nevermind the fact that I had to be threatened out of bed on a school day - on Easter morning we were up and at em! I was mostly trying to see how much candy I could eat before we left for church. Now my mom even mails me an Easter-nest-in-a-box, complete with a new kitchen towel!

Easter morning: Sarah with her nest

2 - Ham, beans, cornbread, and deviled eggs
I don't know if there's a prescribed Easter meal, but many years we ate ham and beans with cornbread. I'm not all the way sure I even like this meal - but I like it on Easter Sunday. :-) My grandma Irene makes the best deviled eggs ever, so those came with every holiday meal!

3 - Sunrise Service
Churches in my community have an Easter Sunrise Service at the Paul Cemetary. We gather at 6 am for a time of interdenomenational worship - celebrating that the grave couldn't contain Christ! I loved this tradition, even though I never loved mornings. After the service we would all go to Connors Cafe family restaraunt for breakfast.

4 - Dying Easter eggs
In the comics today the Family Circus was dying eggs and one of the boys said "Daddy, how long do we have to help you with this?" hahaha. If you know the Schenk kids, then you know we can make even the most simple task complicated and competitive... so when we got older dying eggs was quite the process!

Megan and Matthew dying eggs

5 - Family Easter egg hunts
We would have Easter egg hunts for days when we were little. You'd be surprised how many places you can hide an egg in the living room! I remember being mad that baby Sarah had adult help. Pretty sure she'd be the best at this now though.

6 - He is risen indeed!
I was reminded of this greeting today ... when you see someone on Easter you greet them by saying "He is risen!" and the person responds "He is risen indeed!" Today especially I have been savoring the memories of this greeting - the truth that it affirms and the fellowship it provides.

7 - Canasta
Okay, so this is also kind of an every holiday thing for us. My grandma Irene taught us how to play Canasta when we were kids. She had a lot of patience - we would drop our cards all over the floor, lose interest half way through, be poor sports, and forget the rules of the game. It's something most everybody on my mom's side of the family plays ... and beating grandma is the general goal! :-)

Grandma playing Canasta with Sarah when she was in kindergarten

8 - Stuffing Grandma Vi's Easter baskets
I comandeered the job of stuffing Grandma Vi's Easter baskets. I love anything to do with organizing ... I could go to work everyday taking people's mountains of mess and putting it into logical and flexible storage solutions. :-) So this was an Easter highlight to be sure. And the baskets always ended up even ... minus the candy I ate while I stuffed.

9 - Easter Hymns
I've been walking around the house all day singing (the first few lines) of these hymns. 20 points if you can sing what comes next:
Christ the Lord is risen today, aleluia ..... _____
Up from the grave He arose! ... ____
Hear the bells ringing, they're singing that we can be born again__
He lives! He lives! Christ Jesus lives today ... ____
The nice thing about hymns is that you can sing them even if you can't sing. Except for that one note in Wonderful the matchless grace of Jesus ... ____

10 - Frilly dresses
I saved this for last on purpose because I found the cutest pictures! I'm sure these aren't all Easter, but you get the point. I'm glad my mom took a lot of pictures when we were young.