He is risen! He is risen, indeed!
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| Opening Easter gifts |
I didn't expect any gifts for us parents, so I was particularly touched to learn that three of our children had planned weeks in advance and put time and effort into three beautiful pieces of Easter art for our Easter baskets!
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| The three crosses with mean soldiers (see the eyebrows) |
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| The Holy Family |
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| A cap gun! |
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| A new toddler backpack with a leash for our upcoming airplane travel! |
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| Bubbles for the summer time |
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| Fancy pens |
While I do require my children to write thank you notes to all other gift-givers, I don't require them to write them to their own parents living in their own home, so it was touching and also quite cute that two of them wrote us thank you letters in their best cursive on fancy stationery before we even sat down to eat.
We enjoyed an Easter breakfast, although I had to eat my hard boiled Pysanky eggs while six-year-old Joseph wept. He did not think anyone should be eating such beautifully decorated eggs. I explained that, "We aren't just going to throw away God's good food," to which he retorted while crying and stomping his foot for emphasis, "So you'll just throw away God's good beauty instead!"
For Easter, I gave my husband a copy of "The Sermons of the Ven. Cure of Ars, Sermons for All Sundays and Feast Days of the Year," having read an idea on another blog: The husband can then read aloud to the assembled family St. John Vianney's homily for that exact feast day being celebrated. We started that very Easter breakfast!
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| Children's ages from left to right: 10, 8, 6, 3, 12, 1 |
I tried my best to assemble somewhat complementary, springy Easter outfits. I felt badly for Joseph because I thought I was ordering boys' shirts in sizes 4 and 6, but I ordered two in size 4, so Joseph didn't have his intended new shirt with coordinating tie to wear.
I do think David's wee bow tie stole the show! Although it was downright rotten that I put him in his first hard-soled shoes (instead of Robeez) for the Easter egg hunt! He was walking around gingerly and awkwardly so that he could hardly pick up any eggs.
We drove to the potluck with about ten families and started off with a bountiful Easter egg hunt for about 40 children. The weather at 70 degrees could not have been more perfect. All was delightful . . .
. . . until seconds after this last photo below was taken when Joseph (seen walking down the slope toward the right) plunged headlong into the creek!
He was completely immersed, his hair full of mud, his basket overturned and eggs bobbing pathetically in the cloudy water, the candies inside ruined. For a six-year-old, this was Tragedy.
A bright spot for me as a parent, though, was that one particular sibling walked over with her brother still weeping hot tears and quietly, without words, poured half of her basket full of candy eggs into his basket. As parents, we work so agonizingly hard on trying to build relationships among the siblings (which is not easy: it is hard, every single day) and those little moments mean something!
Chris walked Joseph back to the hosts' house to give him a warm shower and borrow some clothes for him, after which all was well.
The rest of the event went swimmingly . . . but not swimmingly in any more creeks!
I won't close this memory of Easter 2019 without noting the bittersweet enjoyment of our familial and highest holy day knowing that the Muslims perpetrated a coordinated bombing at at least six locations against our Sri Lankan Catholic brethren (a 6% religious minority in that country) on their very Easter morning. More than 200 died and at least 450 were wounded (and "wounded" from massive terrorist bombing means something graphic and lifelong). We Americans are so blessed and complacent that we celebrate our Mass without fear and go to our public parks to celebrate boldly. I feel sorrowful, indeed, for what those Sri Lankan Catholic families are suffering tonight.
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