Easter & Planting Noah's Tree

Easter. The day we celebrate the resurrection of our Savior! Thank you Jesus for your sacrifice! My Noah is in Heaven today because of the price you paid for us.

Today was a great day in the life of our church. We have officially grown large enough to need 2 services on Sunday mornings. So instead of our regular 10:30 service, we started a 9:30 and an 11:00 service. I have to be honest...I was a little worried. I thought we may end up with just a handful of people in the first service and everyone else in the second. God blew my mind today! I had tears in my eyes as I sat up in the sound booth and looked around. Both services were packed! We are just excited to be reaching so many in east Atlanta. Philip gave a great message from God's word and the music was AWESOME!

After church we went to lunch and then we were excited to go pick out Noah's tree. We have
been talking about planting a tree in Noah's honor for quite a while. We were going to wait until his first birthday (July 7th), but that's not a great time to plant a tree. Really now isn't the best time either...but it's better than waiting until July! And today is special since it's Easter and it's also my brother and sister-in-law's 1st wedding anniversary (so it will be an easy date to remember!).

First we stopped by Noah's grave.



My dad was with us. My mom had to be at her church today so she wasn't able to be with us. Dad asked me if he could help me pick out some new flowers for Noah's grave. We still had the fall flowers in his vase and really wanted to put some bright spring flowers in. We left the cemetery and headed to Lowe's to pick out Noah's tree (Yoshino/Cherry Blossom). Then Dad and I went to pick out flowers for Noah's grave.







Then we went home to plant the tree. We decided to plant the tree in our backyard. We are building a deck this summer and wanted to be able to enjoy the tree while sitting on the deck. We chose the Cherry Blossom for several reasons. First of all, it's beautiful! I have always loved these trees. David and I both grew up in Macon and went to the Cherry Blossom festival many times while growing up. Now we live in Conyers and they have a Cherry Blossom festival here
just a mile from our house. There are beautiful trees that line the road that I drive down every day and I really just wanted one of my own.

With a simple google search you can find out some info about the Yoshino (Cherry Blossom) tree...

"The intense beauty and short time span have associated cherry blossoms with spiritual and philosophical ideas such as beauty and the fragility of life."

I think this is the perfect tree to plant in honor of Noah. Just as the blossoms are so very beautiful...so much that they have their own celebration, but are only here for a brief time....so was Noah. Beautiful and fragile. And year after year as the beautiful flowers blossom each spring...

we will remember....