Jawa Easter Egg Hunt

Happy Easter!  This morning was a great and full morning, despite the fact that we didn't really go anywhere.  But life is what you make it, and in fact, the point of Easter Sunday is that Jesus did give us life, and life more abundant.  

This morning was Easter, and like millions around us in their homes, we went to church - in our living room!  We started with our main sanctuary service, watching Pastor Franklin celebrate Easter from his home, and then after that service, we were off to KidPak for probably our best online service yet:

This was a great service, one we filmed a lot of two Thursdays ago up at Lake Burton and at Amy's house.  The egg roulette game turned out really well, and we discovered in a nail-biter that the girls' team won - Daddy smashed a raw egg on his head!  Nerdo was there with the Easter bunny, and of course there was a very nice moment by the lakeside where Pastor Lance was talking to all of us about the real story of Resurrection Sunday.  In the final moments, all the staff showed up on camera to wish everyone a happy Easter.  

I think we filmed this with our phone camera on Friday morning on the front porch.  But it was nice to see the collection of videos from all the staff, each wishing everyone out there a happy Easter.

After church, it was time for the official egg hunt of 2020!  Daddy was obviously a bit more limited this year, but nevertheless, we came up with something good.  We started out with the fact that Jawas love eggs.  

If you've seen "The Mandalorian," you know this.  So there was the start of things.  Actually, what you are seeing above is the end of the egg hunt this morning.  This instruction sheet below is the beginning:

The idea was simple.  The message to the right is written in Aurebesh, which is one language spoken in the Star Wars universe.  The letter symbols just translate to other letters from the English alphabet, so that part is easy.  Figuring out which symbol equals what letter was the challenge.  In order to discover this, Madison had to go find 26 eggs hidden throughout the house.  Each egg had a Jawa with it, and each Jawa had a letter, and what that letter equaled in Aurebesh.  Here are the templates for the Jawas that Daddy made up:

These were the first Jawas I found, actual ones from the movie.  Things started to get more challenging from there, and I knew I had to find a different sort of variety of Jawa if I was going to get twenty-six different ones.

So these were graphics and toys.  You can see top right the one Jawa that we got for Madison as a souvenir of her time spent playing a Jawa named Jinky on our KidPak stage.  And the next two at the top (middle and left) are of her actually dressed as a Jawa on stage.

And here's the rest of the alphabet.  You'll see top middle a Jawa that Daddy actually has a few action figures of.  Also, the Tsum-Tsum is something that Madison has.  Obviously.  So those were the letters, and each was with an egg that had some candy within it, hidden somewhere in the house.  You can see in the first sheet above a checklist of sorts, one that tells her there are three eggs in the living room, or two in the guest bedroom and so on.  And below, here's a checklist to help her know she's found them all.

It's a rogue's gallery for sure.  Jawas have taken on a new significance in our household with Madison portraying one a few times for us on stage.  The biggest reason we had her be a Jawa was because of her size, and it all worked out through our drama.  But now Jawas have sort of taken on a life of their own in our household, and their appearance in "The Mandalorian" sort of reaffirmed that.  Anyway, here below is one rather obvious hiding place for an egg, and a Jawa:

Right next to the pit droid she just made!  It took her a good bit of time to find the eggs, but they were super complicated or anything.  She was having fun with that part, and then surprisingly, she was having fun with this part too, the "translating."

Letter by letter, she wrote out the secret message written in Aurebesh, the one that would reveal where her Easter Basket was, along with the final egg and Jawas.  The first six words were a surprise though... she read it slow, and read it just like Ralphie did in "A Christmas Story."

BE SURE TO DRINK YOUR OVALTINE

This cracked her up, especially because she wasn't thinking completely when she spoke and she read out loud, "Be sure to drink your quarantine!"  It was a hilarious moment!  But once she was done laughing, she was back to solving the mystery of where her Easter basket was.

I thought this part would be a pain, but she was actually enjoying it.  It was such a simple idea, and maybe it was that it was in an authentic Star Wars font, or maybe all the Jawas, but it was super fun.  She solved the puzzle before even getting all the letters, but still wanted to finish it all anyway, handwriting every symbol and translation in her notebook.  Then, it was off to collect her basket!

Yes, it was in the one bathroom that she had not been in yet.  You can see the sandcrawler there with the final egg, and also beside that, you can see her basket for this year.

It just timed out well that "Rise of Skywalker" was released on Blu-Ray recently, so we could pick that up, but this t-shirt was an even bigger hit than that.  Take a look at it:

She wanted a Braves shirt for Christmas, and we had actually ordered a pretty specific one, as you can see above.  It just got here after Christmas, and we've been holding on to it ever since.  It's a Baby Yoda Atlanta Braves shirt, which is pretty unique, but also very beloved.  She was so happy to get this.  And of course, she loved the other stuff in the basket too.  We'll be watching the movie soon enough, although we've got a few other movies in the series to go until we get there.

Mommy was working on a feast for us this afternoon, a proper Easter dinner.  It was difficult to not go over to the grandparents' house this year, but we decided this would be the safest route, given the recent virus spread.  We simply don't know who has it and who doesn't or even completely how it passes from one person to the next.  We know the basics of the last part, but the asymptomatic carriers are the concern, as are the severe consequences for those who are older.  

Mommy's cooking is always superb.  Look at this wonderful presentation. 

And to add to the fun, she folded napkins around some Easter eggs for some extra flavor:

That was nice - and it was delicious too!  It was a pleasant and quiet Easter celebration in our house, and it really didn't end there.  We were watching things online related to Easter, including an amazing performance from Kseniya Simonova, who uses sand to a shifting artistic story on a light panel.  Today's livestream was the Easter story, which was beautifully created for a worldwide audience.  We also watched the livestream from Cirque du Soleil as well, which featured a few of the shows we've seen before in person.  While that was going on, it was time to make cookies!

Here's one of Madison's rabbit cookies.  Mommy made rabbit shapes, duckling shapes, and also Easter egg shapes.  This one egg below might be my favorite of the batch!

Madison made a paranoid egg cookie, and despite all the work on the others, the simplicity of this one still has me laughing.

Here's the whole batch.  We spent a really long time on these cookies, as we have lately.  We just sit there with toothpicks and spoons and glitter and just work away, decorating each one carefully, working on one cookie palette after another.

We had fun with the butterflies, as this has been a season for that lately.  Last year we had that butterfly release at the church, and of course there have been a few visits to Dollywood, which uses the butterfly frequently as a decoration and theme.  We've been watching Dolly do a few stories online lately, and in fact she sang a song for the world today, "He's Alive," singing it once more for everyone on Easter Sunday.  She sang it on stage with a huge choir some time ago, and a video of that has been circulating a lot, as it is Easter season.

Ah, here's our bunny though.  This is one cool bunny.  We had crazy bunnies too, as you can imagine.  It was fun to bake all these, and I can't imagine us actually able to eat all of these.  But we'll give it a proper go!

We watched "A New Hope" tonight, the next Star Wars movie in our marathon, and we watched it on Disney Plus for the laughs.  First, there is "Macklunkey!"  Also notable is Obi Wan's howl to scare off the Tusken Raiders.  We heard that, and just lost it.  We might do a movie night where we watch the original versions of all these movies, just so Madison knows what they used to be like, and what we were accustomed to for many, many years until these changes were made, one by one.  I still don't like the addition of Jabba in this one, as he looks nothing like the Jabba we see two movies later.  Other changes are okay, little additions to the special effects of the final assault on the Death Star, and added visuals here or there.  But certain changes are kind of goofy.  Darth Vader's "Nooooo!" is coming up.

Speaking of "Nooooo!"  Tonight's weather forecast has been looming over all of us for a few days now, and the moment arrived.  Madison slept through the night without worry, and we did in fact pray before going to bed.  But unfortunately, it was a very long night for many people, a night of terror really.  Tornadoes were ravaging the Southeast, and as much news as a hurricane gets, these multiple tornado events are just as devastating.  Mommy and Daddy were up watching the news - Daddy had a place set up in the basement with three chairs to wait things out, should we have to race down there.  Fortunately, it never came to that for us.   Grace, grace.

It was a memorable Easter, that's for sure.  But for us it was a good day, a happy day, and a day where we have drawn closer to each other, and to God.