Not Completely Different

There are times when the 'preacher' life our family is called to is different from the lives of say, our 'engineer' neighbors. Vacation is not one of those times. It takes me days to get ready to leave. All the buying supplies, washing laundry, packing suitcases, making plans. It happens at our house, too - until the wee hours of the morning prior to departure. Putting six people in a van for a 12 hour drive is the same no matter who you are - brutal. Checking into and unpacking into a condo with small children can only go one way - not fast enough. Spending hours on the beach with the kids never changes - spectacular. People watching in a 'touristy' destination - never dull. Coming home to reality after a memorable vacay - we don't want to either!

This preacher family can't wait for our much needed vacation! It is relaxing to just think about the phone not ringing and not being on call. We won't know what to do with ourselves with a full Saturday to play and not be preoccupied. While we have embraced many of the differences in our lives, we are just thrilled that we can be just like everyone else when we are on vacation.

Colored Eggs for Easter

We usually color eggs a couple of days before Easter just as something fun to do - making sure not to give it any major air time or significance in the life of our Easter celebrations. For obvious reasons, we do not want our kids to equate Easter with the coloring of our cute little eggs. We have several things we do to make sure the four little Linos understand and value the reason we celebrate Easter - the death, burial and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. We have added a set of colored eggs to our Easter festivities this year. We are using Family Life's Resurrection Eggs to supplement our family Bible time leading up to Easter. It is 'one dozen bright colorful eggs, meaningful objects, and a devotional booklet bring the story of the death and resurrection of Christ to life' and can be used in a number of different ways. We opened the first egg Saturday night over the course of dinner and Nathan recounted the story of Palm Sunday. As this week progresses, each of the objects inside the eggs will play a part in helping us impact the hearts of our children with the gospel message. This is just one way that we are trying to creatively (someone else's wonderful idea and not mine, of course) help them move forward in their comprehension of who God is and the redemption story. They are all very excited about the surprise in the eggs. They can't wait to see how many eggs we get to open tomorrow and what part of the story it helps tell. This is the set of Easter eggs that I want our kids remember.