A few nights ago my husband and I snuggled up on the couch and spent a good hour watching the new Bible videos that the LDS Church has released. There are about 6 or 7 beautiful videos depicting Christ’s last week on earth and they are really good. If you need something to get you in the Easter mood these will do it.
Click on the picture to link to the movie
The one that had me in tears was the one that portrays Christ’s suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane. I think it is my favorite portrayal of Christ ever, because He seems so human. I think that often I get so caught up in Christ’s divinity that I forget His humanity. I forget that even though He was perfect– He was a man– and that He had a body that felt pain, joy, strength and weakness. Remembering His humanity makes the significance of what He endured and overcame so much more powerful for me. It reminds me that even though I am imperfect and human that I really do have the potential to become like Him.
I also really like the actor who plays Christ, he does an incredible job. Wouldn’t that be a tough role to play? Wow, I can’t even imagine trying to fill those shoes.
I have a favor to ask. Do any of you have any good suggestions for computer software to help me with my budgeting? I have been using an excel spreadsheet and it has worked fine for a few years, but lately I’ve been wishing I had something that was a little bit easier to use and would keep track of things better for me. My ideal program would be one that I could connect to my bank account and have it automatically record my expenses and deduct them from categories. For example, I want something where all I’d have to do is check the “gas category” to see how much I’d spent on gas that month and how much I money I have left to spend for the month, without having to enter all the expenditures in myself. I don’t even know if that is possible, but I am hoping that someone out there might know of one or have a budgeting program they really love. Suggestions?
I feel indebted to Jocelyn from “We Talk of Christ” for all her wonderful ideas about creating Christ centered Easter traditions. Since Jon and I have been married I’ve always tried to have a special Easter dinner where we eat fish and honeycomb (like Christ did after He was resurrected) but that has really been our only Easter tradition. Thanks to Jocelyn I have a few new Christ centered activities that I am going to try out this year. We made resurrection rolls last year and that was really fun, so we are going to add those to our fish and honeycomb dinner this year. I also loved this idea about the 12 days of Easter and am going to have the Easter Bunny (wink, wink) hide 12 special eggs (with symbols of Christ in them) into the kids Easter egg hunt. Then, hopefully, once the hunt is over we can talk with the kids about the symbols they found and what they mean. I am excited to try it out and maybe if it goes well then it might become a tradition.
Do you have any special Easter traditions?
Our house selling adventure is coming along nicely. It looks like our buyers are hanging in there and that the deal should (cross my fingers) go through in the next few weeks. In view of this, Jon and I have been hunting for a new place to live and it has been sort of stressful. I forgot how much I hate house shopping. It always sounds like so much fun, but in reality it never turns out to be as good as it sounds. It seems like every time I get my heart set on a house we find out that it is already “under contract” with someone else, that it has some major problem with it, or it just turns out not to be as great as it looked in the pictures. I am hoping and praying that we find the right house and that things work out. I would prefer not being homeless for a few months! I just have to trust that the Lord knows where we are suppose to be and will lead us there.
For any of you who may have missed it make sure you go read my review of the new book “Christ’s Gifts to Women” and enter the drawing to get your own free copy. It is a book you won’t want to miss out on.
I also just have to add how touched I have been reading your comments and hearing about all the incredible miracles that God has performed in your lives. Writing this blog is such an interesting experience because it has brought such a diversity of people into my life. Sometimes I am so overwhelmed when I begin to think about all the challenges my readers are facing– some of you have health challenges, marriage problems, sick and dying children, problems with extended family members, financial problems, extreme trials of faith, and so much more. So often, after hearing about your stories, I find myself pouring out my heart to God for one of my readers who I don’t even know. Thank you for sharing your hearts with me and I just want you that I love you. I may not even know you but I know that God loves you… and that is a good enough reason for me.
Okay, don’t worry I’m done with the mushy stuff 🙂
I hope you have a wonderful weekend and a beautiful, rejuvenating Easter. He is risen! That is worth celebrating your little heart out about.
If you want to link to your own “Five Things for Friday” post you can use the tool below to add your link. 1) Please link to the URL of your blog post and not your main blog and 2) Please include a link back here.
Our special Easter traditions are that the easter bunny has no place in our home. We talk about the Savior. We have done resurrection rolls before too – yum! Here is last year's post where we had a lesson with hands on symbols for each part of the Easter story and then resurrection rolls.
The one candy we get most years is a chocolate cross for each child. We've watched The Lamb of God in the past, this year we'll watch the new bible videos.
One year we worked on memorizing The Living Christ before Easter.
Opps! Here's the link I mentioned to our hands on lesson : http://ourbusyhomeschool.blogspot.com/2011/04/simple-easter-lesson-and-treat.html
http://www.mint.com. It's free and I like it even better than Quicken.
Mint.com is awesome (and free)! My favorite part is that you can set up e-mail alerts if your checking account balance falls below a certain amount or if you go over in a budget area. It will also send you an end of the week financial summary. Another great thing is that you can split an expenditure into multiple categories. If you go to Wal-mart and buy a gift for someone, groceries, and clothes, you split the bill to say how much of that expenditure was in each of those categories. If your finances are too complicated for Mint.com (lots of investment accounts, etc.) or you just don't want a website (even though it's secure) to have access to your bank account information then I've heard Quicken is great!
The way we celebrate Easter in our family is the weekend closest to the spring equinox has become bunny day. We go day camping and do all of the comercial stuff on that day. For "real" Easter we begin our celebrations the Sunday before with devotionals. Each evening leading up to it we have a song, a prayer, a scripture and a re-telling of the scripture with a picture for our two year old. Doing ghis we are able to cover the last week of Christ's life. On Saturday we will have friends over and we'll eat a passoverish meal with the 4traditional passover foods as well as other foods Christ would have eaten. In adition we eat it all with no silverware! Instead we use the romaine (bitter herbs) and flat bread to eat. I love your idea of the fish and honeycomb. We might just have that for lunch on Sunday!! We got most of our ideas from the book, "Christ Centered Easter" by Janet Hales.
Sonja Ritchie
Here's my 5 Things for Friday post – linky isn't working!
http://ourbusyhomeschool.blogspot.com/2012/04/five-things-for-friday.html
I love Easter! We don't bother with the Easter bunny anymore. We just do a Plan of Happiness Treasure Hunt the day before Easter so that Sunday can be our HE IS RISEN day. We walk through the last week of his life during the week previous. Here is a link to what we do more or less (always flexible). I really love the book A Christ Centered Easter available at LDS book stores.
http://allgoodtreasuresinheaven.blogspot.com/2012/04/our-easter-week-plan.html
Our traditions have morphed over the years, from the Easter Bunny, to a Gospel-centered gift from mom and dad to no gifts. We spend April celebrating. We read scriptures, stories and things like The Living Christ during devotional. We sing lots of songs that deal with Christ's life and with Easter and the resurrection. We listen to The Lamb of God and The Messiah. This year, we have been watching the Bible videos beginning with Christ's birth and we also added Cocoa's month long countdown. It's not very formal, but we get to cover a lot in that time. It really is nice.
I have used mvelopes.com for my budgeting for the past three years. It is ALMOST the perfect budgeting software for me. I pay a subscription fee of about $12/month (it's worth it to me!), but they recently started a free version that sounds like it has ample capabilites! Good luck! 🙂
I'll just 'third' the comment that mint.com is super awesome. Love love love it!
Heather, I stumbled upon this blog post and thought of you and your tiny egg (from last week's "5 Things Friday"). And I wanted to thank you for all your tiny gifts to me…
http://simplyscaife.blogspot.com/2010/11/thoughtful-thursdayponderings-of_18.html
Oh, Jeri Dawn thank you so much for that beautiful link. It really touched me. And.. you are welcome… though I think I should really tell you thank you instead 🙂 You inspire me a lot.
I just LOVE your blog I've been following religiously for quite some time now. I love your words, they inspire me in so many different ways!! Thank you for taking time out of your busy life to uplift a perfect stranger or two along the way :0) on the subject of your expense report, I don't know a program but I have been with America First for 15 years and LOVE them!! With their account you can do exactly that, it allows you to take your expenses and place them into categories (preset categories and you can add your own as well) I love it and it definitely makes my life so much easier! Hope that helps a bit. keep writing, I look forward to every new post!
Oh, great I had No IDEA that America First had that option. I should check into it! Thanks so much.
For serious household or personal budgeting, YNAB is highly recommended.
We ♥ you too, Heather! 🙂
Another vote for Mint. You can access it anywhere. It's been voted one of the best and safest budgeting tools by Money Magazine. They even have usable apps, if you have a smart phone. And it will start to learn your categories. "Chevron is always gas" or "Dr. Sorensen is always dental". Which is wonderful, because you don't have to categorize everything.