An anniversary present for you! (Really!)

So it's been one year and one day (and probably too many references to pee and scrunchies and sweatpants) since I started this blog.

I'm not sure whether to apologize or celebrate that I actually stuck with it.

So as a one-year anniversary present, I'm giving away a gift! (Don't get excited, or you'll be severely disappointed.) And, really, most of it requires you to either work or buy/scavenge to actually use it, so....sorry.

Anways, with Easter right around the corner, I have written a little sumthin' for the kiddos (and before you get all impressed and/or think I've been lying this whole time about my procrastination tendencies, I've started and stopped this little project for three years running - and I shouldn't even reveal that because now you may be prepped to see something that even remotely smells of 3-years-of-hard-work. It doesn't. It's more like one day of ignoring the kids and letting them watch too much TV.)

We have attempted to do "Resurrection Eggs" with the kids in the past - plastic eggs that come with a daily reading and surprises inside. In theory, it's great. However, I've encountered a few problems:

-You're supposed to start 12 days before Easter, which requires me to actually look at a calendar and count back 12 days...ideally at least 12 days before it's Easter. Um, fail.
-Although it's subtitled "The Easter Story for Children," the Resurrection Egg readings are too long and too weighty for most kids under ten. My kids spend 80% of their days pretending to be some animal or another (the other 20% spent screaming at each other) - it's hard enough to get them to stay out of character long enough at the dinner table so we don't have to hear animal squawks or watch them try to eat their food like a gray squirrel. It's got to be short and succinct. Understandable to a fruit bat or jungle explorer.

If you want something done right, do it yourself. So, coming up with a new set of Easter egg surprises and borrowing heavily from Kenneth N. Taylor's "The New Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes," (woop woop to this little gem, by the way - great for kids under six), I wrote up my own booklet for the kids. It starts on Palm Sunday (you're welcome) and ends after Easter (because the Easter story really doesn't end on Easter). And I'm putting the whole thing on here for you to print off for your family (or your grandkids or gremlins or whatever kind of little people you have in your life).

Or if you're someone who hasn't heard the Easter story and are completely bemused by the bits and pieces of this Easter mumbo jumbo you've heard, well, connect with your 5-year-old inner self and read away.

Directions to make your own "Easter Life Eggs" booklet:
a) look below
 
b) print off the pages right from here using the printer icon (they are sized to print on 8.5x11 paper)
c) cut along all the provided lines and staple (and probably trim the far right edge on Sunday - 1, Wednesday - 4, Saturday - 7, Tuesday - 10 because the embedding program is skewing the proportions a bit...and probably trim a chunk off the bottom to make it fit neatly on top of your egg carton to be rubberbanded for storage...I warned you you'd have to work...)
d) procrastinate until the last minute to buy/make/print off the surprises with which to fill the eggs
e) be thankful I omitted descriptions like "1. a donkey (plastic animal, drawing, photo of your boss, etc.)." I was tempted, but in the spirit of Easter (or maybe it was the strength of the Holy Spirit), I refrained.

Enjoy! And happy anniversary! (And please make me aware of more technical problems - I've vowed to stop yelling at my kids to leave me alone, so I've got to walk away from this for a while and actually parent.)  *[3/9/12 update: some printers are cutting off some of the text - if this is the case for you, email me at cobandrob@gmail.com and I'll gladly shoot you the original Word doc, no problem! :) ]