Happy Easter! I thought you might enjoy a few memories and photos from our weekend.
Going into the Holy Triduum—or anything else—with grand plans never works well for me, so this year I kept expectations low. We didn’t manage to get to Holy Thursday Mass. John and I were exhausted, but the boys were bouncing off the walls long after bedtime. So they would have been fine while their parents dozed off in the pew.
We had planned to have no screen time on Good Friday afternoon, but the boys persuaded me to let them build scenes from the Bible in Minecraft. And I wasn’t sorry I had relented when I saw the results.
Then we went to the Stations of the Cross. Toward the beginning our older son whispered, “Mama, I think Pilate sent Jesus to die because he was scared.” Which he probably was, but I never thought about it that way before.
On Holy Saturday we went to our parish egg hunt.
I had thought we might stick around afterward for the blessing of the food, but one of the only things I have learned as a parent is to recognize when your children are done and it’s time to bail. So we skipped it.
We didn’t win any giant chocolate bunnies this year, but we went home with candy and plastic eggs—which are even better.
Saturday also happened to be our beloved Aunt Shai’s birthday, so we made a giant card and wrapped our not-so-amazing gifts—who doesn’t need a talking pig chip clip?—and Daniel and I headed down to the Enoch Pratt Free Library’s central branch, where she works, to make our special birthday delivery.
We had fun sneaking up on Aunt Shai, who was very surprised.
Every time we go to the library we find some new way to entertain ourselves, and this time we made faces through the windows. And we found a few books, too.
Back at home we dyed eggs every color we could find. Some worked, some didn’t.
Now we have lots of hard-boiled eggs.
Before we went to bed, we set out a snack for the Easter Bunny. Many hours later the children fell asleep.
The next morning our boys were excited to look in their baskets and discover Legos and little stuffed Minecraft sheep and small toys and candy and battery-powered toothbrushes, which our dentist was very happy to hear about today.
The Easter Bunny ate the carrots and one of the eggs and left a smiling jelly bean face.
Everyone dressed up for Mass, which was a beautiful service, full of music and all the rejoicing of Easter.
Back at home we made a bunny cake, with every possible frosting option we had on hand.
We also had a bunny ice cream cake and a bunny-shaped piece of butter. My parents and sister Treasa and her husband and 17-month-old daughter came for dinner and a wild egg hunt.
We designated different egg colors for each child. My niece hunted for pink and purple, Leo searched for green and yellow, and Daniel looked for blue and orange. That way we could fill the toddler’s with stickers and the big kids’ with change, and everyone could find the same number of eggs.
Daniel hid his cousin’s eggs, and he was so cute, trying to hide them in easy spots for her.
John handled the hiding of the boys’ eggs, and his were tricky. The boys loved it. We even found an extra orange egg leftover from last year. So maybe we are getting to be better hunters each year. Or maybe I just can’t count and I should have known we had 15 orange eggs.
Alleluia! He is risen! How was your weekend?