Painting Easter Eggs and Listening to Handel's Messiah

We've got Easter Week in full swing around here. We acted out Palm Sunday, we talked about the cleansing of the temple, and then we dyed Easter Eggs. As always, we dyed the first egg red (Bulgarian tradition) to symbolize Christ's blood (the red dye) and his rebirth (the egg). We talked about and memorized John 3:16 ("For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever should believe in him shall not perish but have eternal life") while we worked on dying our eggs. We also listened to and talked about the words in Handel's Messiah - perfect music to have on during Easter (did you know it was actually written for Easter, not Christmas?). "Surely, he hath borne our grief and carried our sorrows...and with his stripes we are healed..."

I love that the kids are old enough now to really have fun creating beautiful and creative eggs. I love that permanent egg dye spilling all over the place isn't such a stressful possibility anymore. I love that they were actually singing along with snippets of the Messiah as they worked on their eggs even though we haven't listened to it for quite a while. I love that we could really feel the Spirit in our home as we enjoyed a creative and fun project together while thinking about and discussing the key event in the history of the world - Christ's Atonement.

Here are some photos of our creations (sharpie pens, egg paint and q-tips, and putting electrical tape on eggs to create letters and patterns were some favorite techniques this year).

Eliza loved her "E" egg.


Ashton made the awesome "L" for Loosli and lightening egg on the left and Jared made his traditional Loosli egg on the right using electrical tape.

Silas went for the drippy look (on both his eggs and his hands):

I made my two traditional eggs - a "sunset egg" dipped in red, orange and yellow bit by bit and a spring green egg to celebrate all the green shoots we're seeing outside. I realized this has become a tradition when the kids asked if I was going to do my sunset egg and spring egg. Fun when they remember things that even I don't remember.

Isaac made a very cool egg with lots of little triangles of electrical tape and everyone was excited to see how it would turn out: