Gearing Up for Easter

Alathea decorated this cookie with a cross design at our church's toddler group this week.

Easter Tradition?

Here's my latest attempt at starting an Easter tradition for the kids: a lamb cake (Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world). But being a minimalist in the kitchen, I don't know if I'll do it again next year. It took me a long time (having icing malfunction didn't help).

Spectacled Bear

Sophia came out of school looking like this one day recently. They've been doing a unit on lots of different types of bears--polar, panda, spectacled...I'm not familiar with the South American spectacled bear (certainly not in its neon pipecleaner form), but apparently it has fur around its eyes that look like spectacles; hence, the inspiration for this craft!

Easter Tradition

This is my take on an Apostle Cake, the only resemblance between this and the original being that this cake has 11 objects on top, representing the 11 true apostles. An Apostle Cake or Simnel Cake is a traditional English Easter cake made of fruitcake with a layer of apricot jam then marzipan on top, finished with 11 marzipan balls on top of that. Since I wasn't sure if my kids would eat marzipan and my husband isn't wild about fruitcake or apricot jam, I thought a chocolate cake with gumdrops was a safer bet for trying to start a family Easter tradition.

Alathea at Church

Thanks to my friend, Julie Padfield, for these photos of Alathea in action:

 

 

Spring (Yea!)

Crocuses in our front garden--the first sign of Spring:

Their "Collection"

The girls have a growing "collection" in our garden that they add to almost every time we walk down the sidewalk--leaves, flowers, rocks, a pine cone, twigs, crab apples. Here they are busy at washing and arranging the contents one day after school: