The only problem is that I didn't have much in terms of picnic foods hanging around. I really wanted to swing by Subway and pick up a couple of 6 inches but since it was a holiday they were closed ;) so I made a random picnic lunch consisting of fruit salad, almonds and pretzels. Rhett thought I was kidding and asked me to pass a sandwich - sorry honey. We did stop at the duka to pick up some of our favorite Ole chips but it actually was closed for the holiday. We tracked down some cold cokes though.
We ate our lunch and had some fun on the playground and climbing trees
Then we started a new family tradition that I'm really excited about. I heard about this somewhere and loved it! The idea is called a "Christmas tree cross" where you take the trunk of your Christmas tree and save it to make into a cross at Easter. I love the idea of connecting the birth and death/resurrection of Christ in this very concrete way for the kids. Unfortunately, our Christmas tree is a 3 ft tall plastic version that came in a box the size of a shoebox from Nakumatt. So I settled for the thing we do have plenty of this time of year - fire wood - and made our cross. We sat out in our yard on a blanket and read the story of the crucifixion to our kids and put the cross in the grass. It was probably one of my favorite moments since coming to Africa . . . sitting out on our little piece of the escarpment overlooking the Great Rift Valley watching our kids faces as they stared at the cross and listened to the story really got it. We reminded them that Friday was the Sad Day but we could rejoice because we knew that Sunday, the Happy Day, was coming!
Then Sunday did come and we ran out into the yard and covered our cross in flowers (which are thankfully about $2 for 20 stems of roses here plus the amazing flowers that grow in our yard).
We also enjoyed a really beautiful sunrise service at RVA and an egg hunt later that day. It was a really fun day that felt like a celebration - as it should!
