Easter--the 'just for fun' traditions!

now I know Easter is NOT about eggs and edible goodies. We celebrate the great sacrifice of our Savior, Jesus Christ, with our thoughts and hearts reverently turning to Him in remembrance of His everlasting Atonement. Eggs have nothing to do with that.

But I enjoy the feast of colors that Easter-- with all its clearly secular rather than religious traditions-- ushers in. Since I am confident my children are NOT worshiping a pagan god or fertility goddess, I see only fun in the secular traditions. Fun and family. So we have our fair share of egg dyeing, cookie making, peep eating, egg hunting, and candy consuming in our family!

Egg Dyeing

This year we just did regular dyed eggs. Next year perhaps we'll venture out for a new method, I have seen a ton of ideas I'd like to try!

 Gwen enjoyed using the "magic" crayon

 Caroline wanted to participate too-- knowing her love of making messes, I only gave her two colors and 3 eggs...and she went to town!

 "Cheese!"

 Gwen wanted to add stickers to hers

 Caroline starts to notice her hands look funny...

 the dripping eggs quickly digressed into "dropped" eggs to see how big a splash she could create!

Caroline's egg started to look pretty grodey (and yes, that is the word I'm going with here), because the green and pink mixed makes brown (opposites on the color wheel and all, what can you expect). But that poop brown layer started to peel like a sunburn, revealing patches of pale pink underneath. Absolutely fascinating. I have no idea why it did that. 

and she thought her hands were interesting before...yeah, by the end of the activity, she looked ridiculous! 

 Gwen's finished eggs

 Caroline's 'poopy' egg

 and another of Caroline's that actually turned out quite pretty

 Caroline's egg lineup

 Of course she had to try some-- and wasn't offended by the vinegar, apparently, because she kept drinking it until I took it all away!

 The eggs

Peeps homes 

(gave us a chance to talk a teeny bit about nature too, particularly bird nests)

Caroline's Peeps didn't make it into their house unscathed...she took bites out of both of them before they got to go "home". 

Cookie baking and decorating:

 (we were blessed to have a completely unexpected visit from my folks for about 5 daytime hours-- we packed in a week's worth of memories, including these cookies!)

 Caroline had to be right there amidst the action

 Caroline hardly let Grandpa get any work done--she wouldn't let anyone else pick her up but just pestered him with "up up up up" until he succumbed!

Gwen's beautiful cookie!

and because this post is already super long, I'll save the egg hunt for another post. That hasn't even happened yet anyway, so it works out perfectly! :)