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"  I love Easter because it&amp;#039;s one of the few times each year that I coordinate meals and crafts with a holiday. It&amp;#039;s a time to get creative and recruit the kids to join in Easter activities. Here are my five favorite things to do with my family on Easter: 1. Cooking and Baking After the New Year, I partly shut down in the kitchen during the winter (too cold and unmotivated with the shorter days), and usually resign to frozen dinners from Trader Joe&amp;#039;s and fresh-cut vegetables for the kids.  Once it starts warming up, I break out my pots and pans again. I love to celebrate Easter with egg-themed recipes like deviled eggs, egg salad sandwiches, and egg quiches \u2013 I make a mean gluten-free, crustless egg quiche. I also like to bake bunny-shaped sugar cookies and cupcakes with bunny designs with the kids. I usually let them decorate our baked goods, which means some of our poor bunny cookies could be missing eyes or have half-eaten legs. It&amp;#039;s all part of the fun of baking.  2. Arts and Crafts My kids love arts and crafts, so we try to weave in holiday-themed projects whenever we can \u2013 Easter is no exception. We make our own Easter baskets \u2013 just take a plain plastic bucket and decorate it with sticky foam pieces (which can be found at art stores) and markers. Then, make bunny puppets out of small brown paper bags \u2013 those sticky foam pieces come in handy here, too. At night, we&amp;#039;ll hold a shadow puppet show with bunnies and other woodland animals.  There are a ton of Easter crafts on Pinterest and websites like Family Fun.  3. Photo Ops In our community, the local shopping center offers free photos with the Easter Bunny. We use the opportunity to get new photos of the kids, and I love to compare them with photos from previous years to see how much they&amp;#039;ve grown.  Spring is also a great time to update family photos. With the extra hour of sunshine from Daylight Savings, I like to take my kids out to the beach or the local park to snap a few photos in the late afternoon sun.  4. Parties This year, we&amp;#039;re going to an Easter egg hunt party for the first time, and my kids are excited. They&amp;#039;ll get to duke it out with other kids while searching for eggs \u2013 yes, they&amp;#039;re competitive even for Easter.  Consider hosting an Easter egg hunt with friends or neighbors instead of going solo this year. It&amp;#039;s a great way to bring other families together \u2013 offering kids double the fun and time to play with other kids. Just ask each family bring a dish for lunch, baked goods, or an arts and crafts project for the kids. 5. Storytelling Whether you&amp;#039;re observing Holy Week, Passover, or the Easter bunny&amp;#039;s arrival, this is a great time of year to share stories with kids about the history of each holiday. I tell my children about Easter in the context of our family&amp;#039;s beliefs.  We like to make up stories about the Easter Bunny in our family. A favorite one in our house is that the real bunnies that inhabit our neighborhood (they&amp;#039;re running around everywhere) are secret agents for the Easter Bunny who check up on children to make sure they&amp;#039;re behaving. The Easter Bunny shares his intel with the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus, so the kids better behave throughout the year \u2013 not just for Christmas. My kids love it and squeal every time they see a real bunny running around our neighborhood. I often hear them say, &amp;quot;Whoa! That bunny&amp;#039;s checking up on us!&amp;quot; What are your favorite Easter traditions?  Tracey Black is the author of Don&amp;#039;t Mess with Mama, a blog about parenting, work-life balance, healthy eating, and life as a far from perfect mom. She has three boys under the age of eight, and lives in San Diego, California. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/life/mom-kids/news/a13770/easter-traditions-tracey-black/>