Holy Week and Easter

For the past month I've been spending a lot of time thinking about Easter and the Atonement. I attribute these thoughts to deciding to participate in Lent. Although I've broken down and had something sweet on a few really rough work days, for the most part I've done well at sticking to my "no sweets during the week".

My thoughts have mostly lead me to wonder what kind of traditions do Dave and I want to have centered around this Easter holiday. Reflecting back on my life, and talking to many friends about this, I've been hard pressed to find a tradition that is actually Christ centered. As Holy Week approached I started reading articles on LDS.org to try to get a refresher on how Christ spent his last days of mortality. I've read an article entitled Reflections on the Savior's Last Week several times and have thought a lot about what Christ was doing/thinking and what I would do if I knew this was my last week on Earth.

I've decided I want to incorporate more of Christ into this season in the future. Maybe I'll participate in Lent each year so I'm more focused on Christ leading up to Easter. I want to set up some sort of scripture Advent Calendar that will take place for the week leading up to Easter. For next year I'll have to also figure out how to include a baby into all this, but I have a year to figure it all out. 

The only thing Dave and I have planned for Sunday is church (I'll be teaching Gospel Doctrine) and making deviled eggs. If it's nice out, Dave wants to go on a long walk and do a barbecue, but that's as far as our planning goes. It's nice to have a holiday where we can just sit back and enjoy our little family of two. Christmas always seems so rushed to me scheduling where we're going to be for Christmas eve and Christmas day and making sure we made the right food to take to the right party, that this is a nice break. Something I'm going to look forward to for the rest of the week.