Happy Resurrection Day to you all!  I hope you all had a wonderful day today as you celebrated the rising of our Savior!  We certainly enjoyed our family day today.  We went to a sunrise service at 7:00 this morning with some of our church family, and enjoyed a delicious breakfast afterwards with some awesome discussions and fellowship!  Though we unfortunately didn’t actually see the sun rise, we did enjoy the beautiful sky and the not-too-cold weather during our service.

During our regular service later this morning, the children performed a play of the Easter story.  They did a great job!  It was so fun to see the little ones like Susannah up there as well, walking around in the crowd scenes like they were supposed to!  We did get a video (albeit an iPhone video), so if y’all want to see, it, let me know, and I’ll post it.  🙂

Now, McIntosh tradition is to hunt for Easter baskets sometime on Easter Sunday, so Mom and Dad’s room was off-limits last night.  (I may or may not have trespassed to get Ella’s pajamas…) 🙂  Back in the old days, when I was little, we would always do the basket hunt as soon as we woke up or right after church, but somehow everything gets pushed later and later as kids get older!  Charles hid the baskets this year, and though several people found their baskets during the day, the search officially began immediately following supper.

But before I get into pictures of that, I want to encourage you to watch this short video about the cross from a medical perspective.  It’s very powerful, and I am awed at the depth of Jesus’ love, willing enough to go through all that just for wretches like me!

Here are my favorite shots.  Even Ella got a basket!  She was thrilled to see that she got animal crackers…

Mom usually uses food items that she got on sale to fill our baskets, whether it be crackers, m&m’s, Easter bunnies from last year’s discounts, or diet pop and fruit cups from the discount grocery store!  It’s tons of fun.  🙂So Charles always has an extremely hard time finding his own basket, since Dad takes pleasure in hiding his basket really good every year.  🙂  Charles loves the challenge, though, and he was determined to find it.  He brought up this bag (below) and was beginning to proclaim his victory when he realized that the bag was actually full of some of our lost tools!  😀  Oops… but maybe he should spend more time searching the house.  Who knows what we might find!  😉  (He did end up finding his basket in Grace’s van, for those of you concerned about his psychological and emotional well-being!)

I was a little bit lazy this year at basket-hunting, but I did end up finding it (after a certain sister gave me several unauthorized clues)!  🙂

What did you do to celebrate Easter?  Did you gain any new perspectives this year?  I certainly did!  It was definitely a blessing to hear and read things about Jesus’ resurrection that I’d never thought about before!

P.S. Verse-image credit (1 Peter 1:3) does not belong to me.