Friday night we had some friends over for an Easter-egg hunt and bar-b-que in the backyard. DJ cooked hamburgers and hotdogs on his new grill while the kids played and the adults lounged on the patio.

Carter missed most of the party because he was inside taking a nap, but he made up for it by Easter-egg hunting in Raine’s basket after she went to bed.

Sunday morning, before we left for church, I tried in vain to get a descent photo of Raine and Carter in their Easter clothes. But all we ended up getting was a seat in the back of the chapel because we were late.

This year we had a fairly “crafty” Easter. Raine made this cute, environmentally-friendly Easter basket at school, so we decided to make a matching one for Carter.

We also colored eggs,

and frosted cookies.

Now that Raine is old enough to have a conversation, we’ve had the opportunity to teach her about the true meaning of the highly secularized/commercialized holidays. It is an interesting position to be in, as a parent, deciding exactly how much of “the world” we are going to let in to our holiday celebration at Easter and Christmas. Raine doesn’t know what the Easter Bunny is or have any expectations of candy or presents, so we feel a big responsibility to balance teaching her how to celebrate the holiday with teaching her why we celebrate the holiday.

I feel like we are doing okay so far because Raine wanted us to sing “Away in a Manger” for at least a month after Christmas and still talks about baby Jesus and Mary whenever she sees the picture of them in her scripture stories book. Although, I’m not so sure we did quite as well with Easter because death and resurrection aren’t as easy to explain to a two-year-old as birthdays and babies.