The Kings: Our Easter

It's turned out to be a very quiet Easter for us this year, with Mum being in Melbourne as my sister Nicki is due to have her baby (after only finding out at Christmas time when she surprised us with being pregnant - it's been the quickest pregnancy in history!) and the rest of my family going away. I looked at tickets to go to Sydney to spend some time with my brother Chrish as he's also alone at Easter, but the prices were very expensive, so we will go up another time when we can get cheap tickets.

Last week we went up to the cemetery to decorate Aaron and Noah's graves for Easter. The boys make me smile when the have running races right past Aaron's grave. I'm sure he would be smiling down too and loving that they are having fun, even though they are visiting their Dad and brother who have passed away.

It's so sad to see two new children's graves at Noah's tree now. Before it was just Thomas and Noah there for so long. The boys put some hanging eggs in the tree.

On Thursday Aaron's Dad and step Mum came to visit and dropped off some Easter treats. It's always nice to catch up with them. They will often comment about how each of the boys are like Aaron in different ways.

It could've been easy to just treat this weekend like any other weekend, since we aren't doing anything with our family this Easter, but I decided to make it a bit special and cooked a special brunch for Good Friday. The boys were very happy as they love any excuse for pancakes.

I had been keeping my eye on the weather forecast as I was hoping we would have some nice weather so we could get out and about. The weather is really cooling down, but we were blessed with a beautiful sunny day, so I told the boys we were going to the beach. I have been feeling bad for Milly who is home alone a lot during the week when we are all at school and work, so I decided to do something that she could do with us. She was just a little bit excited when she realised she was coming in the car with us.

On our trip we spotted this billboard and just had to take a photo. The last week or two my EAL (English as an Additional Language) students who I teach have been talking to me about Easter. Most of my students are Muslim and I love it when they teach me about their celebrations, and their families are happy for them to take part in Easter activities, even though they don't celebrate it.

One day one of them said 'Mrs King, at the supermarket eggs, eggs, eggs' showing me that there are a lot on the shelves. I asked one of my students who hasn't yet been here for a year if he knew what Easter was about and he said no. My other students who have been here longer said to him 'chocolate eggs!'. I laughed and and said that we do give and get chocolate eggs at Easter, but thought it was important to explain a little about why Easter is a time that we celebrate in Australia.

I explained to them that a lot of people in Australia are Christians, and that means we believe in someone called Jesus Christ. I explained how he died and that three days later he came alive again and one of them made me laugh when she said 'wow! It's magical!'. I guess that's the best way to describe it to them who know nothing about what we believe, and also have very limited English.

I decided to go to Greens Beach as we have never actually been there before, and have heard that it's lovely and it didn't disappoint. The weather was beautiful and we enjoyed playing soccer, throwing the Frisbee, playing with Milly and just enjoying the sun.