A sunrise is always wonderful, but on Easter Sunday, after hiking up a mountain in the dark until you are so high up that the sky almost swallows you, surrounded by hundreds of people of all different denominations sharing songs of praise, it brings an incredible feeling of awe and reverence.
Whereas Easter eggs are best if chocolate and hidden among the vegetables. 
And in the east, the dawn was breaking
The sunrise was stunning, the view inspiring and the feeling of reverence for the world and its creator most humbling.
IT wouldn't be Easter without hot cross buns, and it's so much more fun to bake with a friend.
WITH all intention of dyeing them and hanging them on an Easter tree, for days we had been diligently blowing eggs and carefully saving the shells. It didn't happen, but we discovered that crayons make an excellent substitute for dye to bring colour to Easter baskets. And azalea bushes make great hiding places for the eggs!
THE day dawned brightly for our Easter Egg hunt and the children gathered excitedly. After a short circle of spring and Easter action-songs and fingerplays, the children departed with some parents on a walk, while the rest of the parents played the Easter Bunny. We had all kinds of gifts to hide, donated by the parents and all obviously prepared with much love: butterfly-shaped cookies, beautifully dyed hard-boiled eggs, lollipops, painted wooden eggs, felted butterflies, handmade bags containing wildflower seeds, handsewn felt leaf pockets with a tiny ladybird hiding inside.
Naturally the edible goodies didn't last long, but the seeds are already planted in our garden and the butterfly, wooden egg and ladybird have pride of place on our nature table.
OUR Easter preparations had mixed success. For Palm Sunday, we made a 'palm' cross with a long stem of tiger grass from our garden. It was a bit brittle, but worked out okay after soaking in water.
I have a whole new appreciation for the homemaking skills of birds. For our spring nature table, we tried to make a birds nest. The operative word being 'tried'. It took three days worth of outside time, and many start-overs before we had something that I could hold in only one hand without falling apart. How in the world do these little birds perform such a feat of engineering without even opposable thumbs? The project turned from a simple 'let's see if we can do this' into an obsession, and as Emma scuttled around the garden bringing me different supplies, I swear I heard a bird laughing. Eventually, we figured out that twigs and grasses have differing levels of suppleness and looked more closely at the materials we collected to find the best kinds. Thin, winding wisteria branches worked out well; Emma hypothesised that because this plant grows round and round trees, it is good at going round and round nests too. We finally got a passable framework together, and Emma found some soft grass to line the nest. It now sits proudly on our nature table, holding three beautiful wooden eggs, hand-made by a friend for last year's Easter egg hunt.
