happy easter!

happy easter everyone!

i had a lot of fun this week celebrating easter in a few ways. we put together some easter baskets for our nieces and nephew and it was so fun to watch them go through them! it's amazing how little toys and some candy can thrill kids...we need to take advantage of this time in their lives before they want ipads and designer jeans :)

we also had our annual easter egg hunt at work! i hide eggs throughout the labs in my department and everyone else finds them. the fun part isn't the day itself; it's 4 months down the road when we find a random egg hidden somewhere weird.

i really enjoy the commercial/easter bunny/candy part of easter, and i think there is a time and a place for a commercial celebration of any holiday. on the flip side, it can get to be as out of hand as Christmas as far as spending money on gifts and celebrating the easter bunny.

(by the way, the easter bunny is sort of creepy. there's a picture of me as a kid on santa's lap screaming my head off, and i imagine if there was a similar picture with the easter bunny i would probably refuse to sit on his lap. grown men in bunny costumes are weird!)

this year i'm so thankful that i'm spending easter with my husband and spending the weekend at both campuses of our church celebrating the fact that, simply put, God loved us enough to sacrifice His son to save us.  that first easter weekend changed the course of history and the nature of our relationship with God.

surely He took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered Him punished by God, stricken by Him, and afflicted. but He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities. the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed.
isaiah 53:4-5