Our Triduum

Some day I will do awesome educational and religious Triduum stuff with the kids.  This year anything fancy was NOT going to happen...

 

John Paul gets a little obsessed with the Stations of the Cross every Lent (well, the past two Lents - he was already reading last Lent, and that was when he memorized them for the first time, at the tender age of 2.5).  So this year he's been acting them out allll the time, but he's finally over it.  Thank goodness, because he assigned us all characters in the Stations.  He's Jesus, Cecilia's Mary, I'm Veronica, Andrew is either John or Dismus, depending, Mary Claire is a soldier and Elizabeth is Pontius Pilate.

 

Yup.  Pilate.  He kept going up to her and saying, "Hi, Pontius Pilate!  Would you like to play some games with me?"  or  "Pontius Pilate is my friend!"  And of course, there were the awkward conversations I had to have with him during our playdate with non-Catholic friends, in which he addressed me as Veronica and I HAD to address him as Jesus.

 

Aside from that, we did fairly normal Triduum things!

 

John Paul begged for a "Good Friday Craft" so in a rare baby-free moment, I got out the scissors, glue, construction paper, and crayons.  He cut out strips for a cross, glued them on himself, and then I asked what he wanted to write (assuming he wouldn't write anything, since he only just started tracing things a few weeks ago).  He said he wanted to write "Dear Jesus, Jesus died on the cross on Good Friday."  The product below is 100% him:

 

We got "DEAR JESUS, JESUS IS IS DY IO" (and then he ran out of room) which is actually pretty impressive considering he has NEVER written a single word by himself before!

 

Then we made these "Passion Pita Pizzas" that I saw on Catholic Cuisine.  John Paul was REALLY into it.  Cecilia was...  really into eating handfuls of cold cheese and pizza sauce?

 

 

I think you can tell whose is whose...

 

And I made some normal ones for me and my mom.  They were pretty tasty!

 

We made pretzels on Saturday, and did an okay job molding them into letters.  They were SO SO SO yummy!

 

John Paul made the "polliwog" below "Jesus," and Cecilia insisted that we spell "Mary" as well as Jesus.

 

Some of the more pretzel-shaped, but still misshapen products.  Still delicious!!!

 

See, doesn't she look happy to be eating it?

 

I tied an Envirosax bag around him to serve as an apron.  The kids LOVED making these and I think we can definitely incorporate food activities into our Triduum next year!

 

John Paul also went to the stations of the cross at our church with Andrew on Friday night.  Andrew was singing all the Holy Week services at another church, and that combined with bad timing (7:30 NEVER works as a mass time with these kids!) and overabundance of children meant that I didn't get to anything this Triduum :(  Maybe next year.  At least we made it to Easter Mass as a family!