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!!!!