Passover Picnic in the Park!

In an effort to slow down and get back to the reason for Easter-the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ-my sister Shonda and her husband and son came up last Saturday for a "passover picnic in the park". They were planning on coming up anyways, and at the last minute we decided it would be a fun idea to do the picnic and coordinate some of it with themes from passover and traditional passover meals. It was last minute (Friday night/saturday morning) and so we didn't have time to prepare as much as we could have, but we were creative (can you be creative with passover?). I had a bunch of meat in the freezer, but no lamb, so we decided on roast chicken (didn't think roast pork would be appropriate somehow). We had carrots and instead of the apple/cinnamon mixture, we put the cinnamon in the carrots. We made garlic mashed potatoes (not traditional at all, but super yummy). We also brought grape juice, pita bread (which, interestingly enough, actually has yeast in it) and bitter herbs in oil. So we could do parts of the passover/last supper meal. We packed it all up and broke out the picnic backpack set that Mike and I have used like twice in 5 years of marriage (it was actually a really cool wedding present, we just never think to use it) and we headed off down to the Fort Worth Botanic Garden. It was so fun! We ate our chicken, potatoes, and carrots. Then we read about the last supper. We talked to Mary Kate about the Isrealites and why the bread was unleavened (even though ours wasn't-hey, it was still flat). I don't think she completely understood, but I think she understood enough. Then we tasted the bread dipped in the bitter herb oil (she did not like that part-but it got the point across). Then we broke the bread and passed the grape juice and explained that Jesus did that with his disciples. It was really fun! IT was a beautiful day and so nice! I think next year we will try to do a more traditional passover meal, I don't know if we will make it a picnic or not. I guess we have a long time to think about it. It will be a nice tradition to really help us focus on the only reason for Easter. To focus on our Faith and our Savior. Anyways, afterwards we walked around the Botanic Gardens and had fun taking pictures of our families! It is really nice to live so close to my sister! Here are some pictures: