Easter 2023

We had a wonderful Easter.  The Easter bunny showed up on Friday afternoon.  Jared was working early on Saturday morning so it was nice to get my photos of them with their baskets while everyone was here.  Alex, Owen, Weston, Savannah, and I went to a church Easter breakfast and egg hunt on Saturday morning.  We didn't have time to color eggs and make the sugar cookies until Monday evening, but I didn't want to miss out on it.  We basically had Easter weekend from Friday-Monday.  Savannah went to her ice skating party on Saturday afternoon and Alex and I went to the temple.

As I mentioned previously, Easter was pretty busy.  Savannah, Owen, and I got up early to practice with the choir.  We sang "Oh Divine Redeemer" and "He is Risen" in Sacrament meeting.  Savannah also sang Easter songs with the Primary kids.  The meeting was great.  Right after church, I headed home to start on the rolls and potato casseroles.  I pretty much spent the whole afternoon baking.  We squeezed family photos in there.  I finished recording some accompaniment for my Easter Devotional for after dinner.  We had our Easter meal with 3 large families, 1 couple with a newborn, 2 missionaries, and their friend.  So we had 22 (plus baby) at our dinner.  However, three of us combined efforts (made a little extra of our assignment) and delivered a meal to another family in our church.  So we needed enough for 25 people.  Our friends hosted the dinner, so they did all the cute decorations and tableware.

We had a great meal, played some games, did my Easter devotional, and had a testimony meeting by the fire that evening.  The whole day filled me to the brim!  

One of the talks during the recent General Conference inspired me to put extra effort into our Easter worship.  I knew I wanted to do something similar to our Christmas devotional with singing songs and reading the Christmas story.  So I made one for Easter, with Easter songs and reading passages about Jesus' last week as well as after He was risen.  I started with the triumphal entry into Jerusalem and then read a passage about Jesus washing the disciples' feet and admonishing to love one another. Then we read a passage about the sacrament and one about prayer.  The next was Gethsemane and the Crucifixion, followed by Jesus' resurrection.  Then we finished up with two more passages and songs - the first when Jesus appeared to His "other sheep" on the American Continent and the last when He appeared to Joseph Smith in our day. We did 9 passages and songs.  I ended up playing and recording the songs on the piano so they'd be in order and ready to go.  The recordings weren't great, but it worked okay.  Here are some of the passages: