Easter Octave

Here's a look at some of the fun things we did during the Easter Octave last week...


We made Easter cards...

The kids celebrated at their Good Shepherd "classes" (religious ed). Chiara was very proud of the Easter candle that she got...

Playtime outside on a rare afternoon without rain!

Yeah, that's a light saber dual...

Cookie making...

Elena made a wonderful mess :)

Matteo was more into cookie eating than cookie decorating :)

Easter egg dyeing and painting...

Elena got to paint with water colors after her nap. You saw what happened with the flour during cookie making, right?! There's no way we were going to include her in egg dyeing and painting :)

The eggs make a nice addition to our table for the Easter season!

Happy Easter!

Happy 2nd Birthday, Elena!

Yesterday was Elena's 2nd birthday!


Here she was one year ago on her first birthday.

She's grown so much over the past year... she now has a mouthful of teeth and headful of hair and a commanding use of the word "No!" :) She loves climbing on things, going outside, reading books, and she is obsessed with babies! She's putting 2 words together now in her speech and she has starting "singing" over the past few weeks. AND, she draws with her LEFT hand :)

We also celebrated Dany's birthday yesterday. His birthday was last week, during Holy Week, but he wanted to wait until Easter to celebrate.



Elena got a slice of our Easter Sour Cream Pound Cake with strawberries for her birthday cake. I was surprised that she was able to blow out the candles herself!

And she got a bit of homemade whipped cream, which she greatly enjoyed :)

Presents...

Happy Birthday, little girl! I can't believe that our tiny little peanut has grown so much!

Happy Easter!!

Happy Easter! We hope everyone had a wonderful Easter Sunday!

Here are a few pictures from our day...

Last night after Dany, Maria, and Cati left for the Easter Vigil and after I got the others in the bed, I got to prepare things for Easter morning!



Here are the kids digging into their Easter baskets this morning. Even though the girls didn't get into bed until nearly midnight, they were up a little after 7:00 this morning.

Today we not only celebrated Easter, but also Elena and Dany's birthdays! Here is the birthday girl this morning.

Here are the kids after Mass this morning. It's always a joy to see the transformation of the church from Good Friday to Easter morning, and it was really wonderful for me to see Matteo appreciate this for the first time this year. You could see the joy in his face when we went into the church this morning and as we sat down and he had time to look around. He even asked me about half way through Mass if it would stay decorated like this for the whole Easter season (we celebrate Easter for 50 days - until Pentecost Sunday).

Matteo really participated in the Triduum celebrations this year. He asked to go to the Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord's Supper this year (it's rather late, so only the older kids usually go). He really paid attention and participated at this Mass and on Good Friday. He was very serious about Venerating the Holy Cross the "right"way :)

Easter egg hunt this afternoon! The weather forecast called for rain all day, but it actually rained only a bit this morning. It was great to get to hunt eggs outside!

Here are some of the kids writing with the sidewalk chalk that they got for Easter.

Notice how Elena is writing with her left hand. She does this consistently. I'm pretty sure that I FINALLY have a lefty!!!

Here is the birthday girl on the phone with family in Italy.

Birthday pictures to come.

I also hope to post other pictures this week as we continue to celebrate Easter. We observe Lent for 40 days and we observe Easter for 50 days! We're taking the Octave of Easter off from school this week. We hope to bake cookies, dye eggs, make cards and just have fun!