Easter Crosses

The girls love to paint so I got them some little wooden crosses from Michael's and let them paint Easter crosses! It was super fun!

 

Easter Egg Hunt

The weather ended up being perfect for the Easter egg hunt this morning at church. It was slightly chilly but otherwise great. In past years it has been freezing cold, raining and windy so this was a great improvement. We got some great pictures!

Big Bear and Me Too before the big event! Me Too isn't feeling 100% - drippy nose.

Big Bear, Me Too and some friends from church and school!

Campo enjoying the festivities from his stroller!

And they are off!!


Me Too getting a little sidetracked by what is in the egg instead of getting as many eggs as she could like Big Bear!

Big Bear really had the idea this year. The past couple of years she was very timid and would end up with just a few eggs!


Wow - that's a lot of eggs!

All 3 kiddos together. We couldn't get one with Me Too looking up!


Playing afterwards!




And then we went somewhere else...can you guess?

From this...



To this...

Have a great Holy Saturday! Gotta run and get sandals for Big Bear and then rest up for the marathon tonight - otherwise known as Easter Vigil!

Special Week Calls For Special Prayers

I should have posted this a week or two ago but just thought of it this morning. Pray extra hard for your parish priests and deacons and whoever else is instrumental in liturgy planning and execution this week. This week is filled with the most beautiful masses and services of the liturgical year. Translation - a LOT of work! Even though my dad is a deacon, I never had a clue as to how much planning and preparation and hard work goes into this one week of the year. It wasn't until I worked at my church for a few years that I realized that this week alone translates into weeks of meetings to plan the masses, time spent contacting people to ask them to be a part of the masses, and practices to get the people who are part of the masses to do the things that they need to do in the right order/speed/way that they need to do them! In other words, it is a lot of work and only a few people doing all of that work!

However, it is all worth it on Thursday, Friday and Saturday of this week when the Church's most beautiful liturgies take place. I am so pumped up right now just thinking of the week coming up. The feet washing and altar stripping (which I get to do again - 3rd year in a row!) on Thursday. Kissing the cross on Friday. And, well, I can't narrow the Easter Vigil down to just one thing...the dark, the candles, the beautiful readings that tell you how we have gotten where we are, the people entering the church, and on and on and on!!!

My sweet husband, who knows just how much this week means to me, has encouraged me to try to make all 3 of the masses/services (I'm not sure what the correct term for Friday's service is since it's not a mass) this week despite the fact that it means he will have to have all 3 kids alone night after night. It is even more amazing that he is so understanding when you take into account that he is not Catholic! I don't know that I'll make it to all 3 but I'm sure going to try.

And tomorrow, we get to wave our palms in celebration of Christ's triumphant entry into Jerusalem. Even though we know what is to follow, for this one day, he gets to be the celebrated King. I wonder if He even knew that what was about to happen was so close at this point. I hope not, I hope He got to enjoy it...at least for that one day.

C C C Toe

I was telling Big Bear that she was such a good girl at Easter Mass this morning (couldn't say that to Me Too without having to go to confession!) and I thought she said something like, "I see CCC Toe" but then figured out she said she sings CCC Toe. Translation: she was telling me that she sang Resucito - the recessional song that is played at many of our Easter masses every year. It is an awesome song and they have full on trumpets and maracas and everything. I heard them practicing it yesterday so I was singing it and dancing around with Big Bear last night and got her pretty excited about hearing it!