Easter 2015

This Easter, we were blessed to have Grandma Nana and Grandpa Papa come to our house! 

Also this Easter, we enjoyed all kinds of food, particularly foods that reminded us about Jesus Christ's sacrifice for us. 

Before the grandparents got here, I made carrot cake with the boys. They liked putting sprinkles on the top.

Last Supper

The grandparents got here Thursday, just in time for our Last Supper meal, also the Passover dinner. We ate at the coffee table in the family room on pillows, similar to a real Jerusalem dinner during Christ's time.

It was my first time ever trying to make this kind of food. I was really surprised at how delicious everything turned out! The lamb is on the yellow platter. It was soooo good! I baked it in my slow cooker for most of the day with tomatoes, onions, garbonzo beans and lots of yummy spices. We had bitter herbs in our salad, karpas, and haroset. We also had a few other foods from Jesus' time and place, but not necessarily from the Passover dinner, like olives and cheese.

Here is my "unleavened bread." I used pie crust and seasoned it three different ways and we dipped it in honey. It wasn't exactly authentic, but extremely yummy. I love how Tanner's hand is in the picture. He couldn't wait to get more!

My mom made the haroset. It's a dish kind of like applesauce. Dallin loved it.

Jeremy was pretty unsure about how all the meal would go. But he was pleasantly surprised with all of it! That's why his mouth is full of food in this picture, haha. And Jeremy really liked how I read to everyone what the different foods and spices symbolize. We all learned a lot!

On Friday, we hosted our 2nd Annual Zavoral Easter Party. 

We had a great turnout: 21 adults and 14 children!

I was so excited to find hot cross buns at Super Fresh. They were beautiful, and a great reminder on Good Friday of our Savior's great sacrifice for us. 

We had a huge Easter egg hunt for all the kids. Did you know that Easter eggs represent new life and the tomb in which Christ was buried? I stuffed all the eggs with things like raisins, goldfish, pennies, koosh balls, tiny bottles for blowing bubbles, and stickers. Don't worry, there were also eggs with candy. 

Papa and the boys hid about 140 eggs before the party started.

I color coded them so that each kid (in theory) would search for eggs with their assigned color, and therefore each kid would get an egg with every single "treat" that I used. I was surprised that pretty much every kid did a really good job finding their assigned color...except Dallin!

Me and Tanner were looking for dark blue eggs.

One of our 3-year-old friends also ditched the color coding idea. He recognized the sound of pennies in one of the eggs. So he went around the yard shaking every egg he found to determine if it had money inside. He ended up being the richest kid at the party!

Also at the party, we did our traditional Rice Crispy Sculpting Contest. The challenge is to make a sculpture that has something to do with Easter or Spring. We had LOTS of creative submissions this year, from children and a bunch of adults.

Tanner was very proud of his Easter Monster sculpture, and won the "Scariest Sculpture" award.

 Here are some of the other submissions:

Tomb

Giant Palm leaf/branch with donkey in left forefront. (mine)

Flower on left (Nana). Eggs in nest on right.

Hotdog at the spring baseball game, with ketchup and mustard. (Jeremy)

Joseph Smith on right, his vision on left. It happened in the Spring of 1812, so that's how this one fulfills the "spring" requirement.

Bunny rabbit

Baseball

Tomb with crosses from Golgotha on top.

And lots of other cute submissions, including the judge's favorite that I didn't get a picture of! (it was a foot wearing a flip-flop sandal)!

We made Grandpa Papa be the judge. Then, we gave away ten different prizes for various sculpture categories. We also had prizes for winners of the Easter Trivia game that people filled out on paper throughout the party.

Dallin made a new friend!

I was so glad that the Peterson kids came!

I could not have hosted the party without the help of my parents and, of course, Jeremy!

Day at the Rochester Children's Museum

On Saturday, Nana and Papa took the boys to the museum while Jeremy and I shopped at Menard's for summer supplies. They had a really great time!

 

We wore our Cinderella shirts from the Cinderella musical.

Easter Sunday

The night before, I made Resurrection cookies with the boys. We put them in the oven overnight, and sealed it up like the stone was sealed shut to Christ's tomb. Then, on Easter morning, we went down to see how the cookies were. We pretended an earthquake opened the oven, just like the ground shook when the stone was moved away. Inside, we found that the cookies were hallow and empty just like Christ's tomb!

Okay, so the cookies didn't taste that great. I don't think I followed the recipe exactly. Oh well, it was still fun. And we ended up reading some good scriptures along with it!

Grandpa imitated the boys' reactions when trying the cookies.

After the cookies, we looked for our baskets. We all hid each other's baskets. Dallin really liked his sports pants from Grandma Z.

Tanner was excited to finally find his basket. 

He wasn't so excited to discover that it didn't have as much candy as he wanted, even though there was a whole bag of candy from Grandma Z.

Nana and Papa liked their basket surprise, too.

We all found our baskets!

We got to spend most of the day watching the prophet and other church leaders speak to us from SLC. This General Conference happens every 6 months, and sometimes it occurs on Easter Sunday. There were some amazing talks and sermons given. 

In between conference sessions, we had an amazing Easter lunch on the back porch. It was barbecued Salmon with honey glaze to represent the fish and honeycomb that Christ ate after he was Resurrected.

We had the Okello family join us for the afternoon session of conference. When the boys got wiggly, Nana and Papa helped keep them entertained.

I can't remember when this picture was taken, but somewhere during the weekend, Dallin was so tired he fell asleep during his late lunch.

Class at ECFE 

On Monday morning, Nana and Papa came to see our little class that we go to every Monday. This class is provided by a program called ECFE (Early Childhood & Family Education). We get to have free time and projects, circle time, and then the kids get free time with their teacher while parents learn and discuss parenting topics. Side note: I have been teaching a weekly mommy and me Music class through this program, once a week since September, and it is really fun, especially because my boys come to the music class with me!

The boys do really well during circle time. 

Dallin sometimes runs up to the teacher to point to her book and answer questions. Then, with a little prodding, he comes back to me. I love the freedom and safe environment that the kids have here.

After ECFE class, it was time to say goodbye.

We were really sad to see Nana and Papa go home. Both boys cried. Thank you Grandma and Grandpa for coming and playing with us and helping us enjoy an amazing, yummy food-filled Easter!