April 2022: Happy Easter!

Have I mentioned Easter is my favorite holiday? It is. This is the first year that all the kids and I made it to every Easter triduum liturgy: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil. Michael Jr and Gussie served at all of them I think, and I snagged some pictures from our photographer friend. These are probably not in order but I'll try to explain fun parts.

This is the lighting of the new Paschal candle for the year.

That's Michael Jr in the dark church, probably at the beginning of the Easter Vigil which starts in darkness as the priest and servers bring in the new Paschal candle.

Easter has really good vestments.

Some of the alter boys - there are a lot of them now! You can see Gussie on the far right in the back.

This is also Gussie, with the once-a-year only job of clacking the clacker (officially called a crotalus, but they all call it a clacker). No bells are supposed to be rung in the church from Gloria in the liturgy on Thursday until after the Goria in the Easter Vigil on Saturday, leaving Good Friday largely in solemn silence. But it's still preferred to have an instrument to highlight parts of the mass, so they replace the altar bells with a wooden clacker. 

That's Michael Jr (before we cut his hair) holding the left and his friend James holding the crucifix next to him, getting ready in the sacristy before mass.

Do they look like they're having fun? The altar boys were charged with recreating the earthquake at Jesus' death during the Good Friday liturgy, so they had to maintain thunderous banging on the kneelers in front of them for about a minute. It was a job they were up for.

Here's our annual Easter Feast family photo. I have no comment.

And a few pictures from Easter fun at Grandma's house in the afternoon, with food and an egg hunt for the kids and a game that involved Daddy putting on a shirt with candy glued to it and running off while the kids tried to catch him and pull off the candy bars. Once we corralled Charlie and removed him from the hunt, and had Daddy slow down a bit to let Agnes grab a piece in the middle, good fun was had by al.

These eyeballs are supposed to go on the end of your finger to make a puppet out of your hand. Don't tell Edie - it's a much funnier toy this way. Happy Easter!

April 2022: Garden Flowers and Epiphany Egg Hunt

I always have the most pictures of the early spring flowers because that is when I am excited enough to actually get my camera out and upload and post pictures. I don't enjoy the summer and fall parts of the yard any less, but will admit that the excitement of saying goodbye to winter has faded by that point and I'm just not as motivated to capture every new bloom.

Anyway, here are all the April flower pictures:

The April weather for our annual Easter Egg Dash at Epiphany is generally hit or miss, but this year it was beautiful. We really had an amazing Spring season!

April 2022: Michael Turns 12!

Yes, technically Michael turned 12 on March 31, but these pictures are from April so there it is. 

Being the bonified tween that he is, every question I ask Michael is met with a shoulder shrug as his final answer. So when I asked him what he wanted to do for his birthday and he replied "a GPS scavenger hunt" I was surprised but determined. I rode around the neighborhood on my bike looking for good places to hide things and noting the gps coordinates, then invited his friends James and Charlie and their families to join the hunt. The moms and I relaxed in the garden with the preschoolers among our children, and I sent Catherine, Mary, and Gia to oversee the rest of the kids on the scavenger hunt. Each cache had a picture of Michael Jr from some year past and a small toy or task to complete. When the found it, Catherine texted me a picture, then I sent her the next set of coordinates. Here are a few of the pictures she sent me:

Mary and Gia did a great job supervising, obviously.

The final cache was in our yard, and it was a giant Sam's Club size box of doritos, because that's what makes them happy. Then we had presents and oreo ice cream cake.

Edie gave Michael this balloon. We all knew what was coming, and it was still funny.

It's hard to believe Michael is so near the teenage years, but it's easy to believe he'll be one of the good ones. He's great with Agnes and she loves him as her biggest brother. He looks after Edie when they go on bike rides together, and has built a name for himself as a trustworthy pet sitter in the neighborhood as well as an excellent Jr Counselor for local kids' camps because the kids love him. He can still climb any structure he finds in front of him and can out-bike all of us except his dad, although Catherine can still beat him in a foot race if it's long enough. We have found a good system with school and he is doing a great job; I can only imagine how frustrating it gets at times to watch your non-dyslexic siblings flying through material that you have to trudge through one slow and heavy step at a time, but he is determined and has excellent instincts in math and engineering. Plus he still indulges me every time I walk up behind him and trap him in a big hug. 

Happy Birthday, Michael! You could uses a haircut, but we all love you and are so glad you're part of the family.

April 2022: The Magic House

I've realized that when all the kids in the house were young, we would do a lot of things and go a lot of places geared towards toddlers and preschoolers. But now that so much of our schedule is dominated by activities for our school aged kids and teens, we don't do nearly as much of the preschooler stuff with Agnes. So when a friend invited us to the Magic House for her daughter's birthday I made room in the schedule because, between being three with five older siblings and the whole covid shutdown thing, Agnes had never been before. She **loved** it (no surprise).

Edie came along to double the fun. They rode this slide about twenty times as soon as we walked in.

Whatever the special exhibit was include a lighted sand tables which the girls would have played with all day.

The Jack-and-the-beanstalk climber never gets old.

There was also a special Indian exhibit they they got to sit in a tuk-tuk, dress up in fancy saris, and have a photo in front of the Taj Mahal. 

Then we spent a long time in the outdoor construction area. Agnes assumed the position of foreman pretty quickly, and Edie was very happy doing the manual labor.

Agnes had never seen the static electricity maker before so we had to stop by before we left. She didn't want to do it by herself but Edie was happy to lead the way as usual.

Now I'm making a list of all the preschooler outings we need to get to before Agnes is too old to enjoy them!