Easter at the Tritt house is full of wonderful traditions! All of us love celebrating the resurrection of Jesus. We have some old traditions that have been around since our first child was born, and we have some brand new traditions that we enjoyed making this year.

One of the first things that we do to prepare for Easter is dye our eggs – all 5 dozen of them. Yup. 60 eggs. Before you start thinking that we must be sitting around dying eggs for hours, you have to remember that we have 7 kids that still live at home. That’s 9 people to divide all of those eggs between, so this way everyone gets a decent amount to color.

My family doesn’t really dye eggs in the traditional way. We stopped doing that once our oldest kids got to be teenagers. We use the traditional egg dye, but we also get out the sharpies, and the creative minds run wild!

Believe it or not, most of the eggs are gone in just a few days. Between the deviled eggs for Easter dinner and people eating them for breakfast, 5 dozen eggs go pretty fast around here!

A new tradition that my girls and I started this year, was to attend the Good Friday service at our church. This was such a sobering time as we reflected on the death of Jesus. All of us came out of the service with a fresh view of just how much God sacrificed for us.

The very next morning, my youngest daughter and I had to be back at church at 7 am to help hide over 6000 plastic eggs filled with candy and other goodies. It took us nearly 2 hours to hide them all and only about 20 minutes for all those eager children to find them all! It was such a great time of serving the community with our church family. Another new tradition that we will be keeping!

My favorite Easter tradition would have to be one that I have kept for as long as I can remember. Waking up early on Easter morning and going to the sunrise service at the camp where I grew up. I’ve only missed two of these in all of my years. Once when my husband served in the Air Force and once when I was giving birth to my son, Mark.

I absolutely love sunrises, and to couple this with the celebration of Christ’s resurrection is one of the best ways to spend Easter morning.It truly is a wonderful experience!

The morning starts off with a short reenactment of Jesus’ walk up the hill to Calvary. For the past several years, two of my sons have had this privilege. They walk to the sound of a trumpet playing “The Old Rugged Cross”.

After this, there is a time of singing, reading God’s Word and a brief Easter message. This all takes place with a beautiful view of the sun rising over the trees.

When we get home from the service, the kids will find an Easter basket in their rooms. We don’t get too carried away, and there isn’t tons of candy in there, but I think that as long as I have unmarried kids, they will get a chocolate Easter bunny from mom!

I like to put other things in the baskets, like a favorite drink, or maybe a clothing item the kids need. I re-use the baskets every year, except for the two little boys. For their baskets, I buy them a new sand bucket and shovel to take on our family vacation. This year, I included new swim suits for them, since they both would need one anyway. They were super excited!

After church on Easter, we have a nice ham dinner together, and then everyone spends the rest of the day enjoying each other’s company and many of us take a much needed nap!

I love all of our Easter traditions. I love spending time with the family, and I love celebrating our Savior together. HE IS RISEN!!!!

Every year about this time, pictures start popping up on all sorts of media of the beautiful cherry blossoms in Washington DC. For many years, I talked about going to see them, but when I actually got around to planning anything, I had missed my window of opportunity and the blossoms were all gone.

Three years ago, I FINALLY made it to DC to see these amazing trees in all their glory. I read somewhere that the sunrise is beautiful if you watch it come up from the Lincoln Memorial. Since sunrises are one of my favorite things, and crowds are not, I came up with this crazy plan to leave my house at 4 am and park myself on the steps of the memorial until the sun came up. I would then take a stroll around the tidal basin to see the cherry trees before all the crowds arrived for the day.

Only one of my kids was up for joining me on my crazy adventure. My youngest daughter, Alyssa, jumped at the chance for some one-on-one time with her mom, and gladly got up on a Sunday morning at 4:00 and headed to DC with me. We parked behind the Jefferson Memorial on Ohio Drive SW and hiked a mile to the Lincoln Memorial. The sunrise was indeed spectacular and the cherry blossoms were breathtaking. We made it back in time for church, but we had to elbow each other all through the sermon to stay awake. Maybe Sunday wasn’t the best day to choose to get up so early!

This started an annual tradition for us. Last year, we were joined by another mom and her kids, and another one of my daughters joined us as well. The trees were still magnificent, but it was too cloudy to actually see the sunrise. This gave me a few more ideas to improve my planning for this trip.

This year, I watched the weather more carefully, as well as keeping up with the peak bloom predictions at cherryblossomwatch.com and we chose Monday morning for our trip. Even though it was a chilly 32 degrees when we arrived in DC, the skies were very clear, and I knew we would be in for a spectacular show when the sun came up.

All four of my younger kids went with me. I had a friend and her kids join us as well, and we met up at 4:30 at the local park and ride. They all climbed in my big van and we were off! One great thing about leaving so early in the morning, is that there is absolutely no traffic on the way down! The trip to DC usually takes about 80 – 90 minutes from where we met. It took us 54 minutes – no speeding!

I park on Ohio Drive SW near the Franklin D. Roosevelt memorial for this particular trip. They make it a one way road with free parking available on the left. At 5:15 in the morning, there are ample parking spots to choose from, even for our 15 passenger van. From there, it’s about a half a mile walk to the Lincoln Memorial, and there are a few cherry trees along the way!

Another helpful thing that I discovered, especially when taking this trip with kids, is that there are bathrooms under the Lincoln Memorial! Finding a bathroom in DC at that hour of the morning is not something I look forward to, so this makes our trip a lot easier. Oh, and they’re heated.

After a quick stop in the bathroom, we all climbed the steps and sat down to wait for the sun to come up.

Bit by bit, the sun emerged from behind the skyline. There were several photographers at the memorial and a few other observers despite the chilly morning. The view did not disappoint!

Once the sun was up and we had gotten our fill of pictures, we headed over to the tidal basin to see the cherry blossoms.

We entered in by the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial, turned right and walked by the water until we got to the Franklin D. Roosevelt memorial where there just happens to be another bathroom! We got lots of pictures of the trees and totally enjoyed the beauty of God’s creation before heading back to the car, which, if you remember, was parked just outside of the FDR memorial.

I absolutely love this tradition! I hope that some of my tips for this trip are helpful for those who would be crazy enough to try this! If you can handle the early morning wake up, it is totally worth it!