Holy Week & Easter Week 2015 (and a Giveaway!)

I always like to have our little recaps of Holy Week for posterity's sake - here's what we did this year:

Toddlers and glue sticks.  Finally made Amanda's candlelit prayer cards (which are really appropriate all year long!) with everybody still in their pajamas.

Then John Paul decided we would pray a rosary for all our prayer intentions - I was rather surprised, but it is John Paul, after all...

The twins did NOT try to touch the candles! They did, however, blow them all out after 2.5 decades, but that was better than I had expected!

John Paul insisted on making his candle yellow. Cecilia decided to make three candles... And Mary Claire and Elizabeth actually stuck to the plan, mostly!  We finally sent two of them to our (soon-to-be cancer-free!) friend Matt and his wife (whose name John Paul spelled wrong... Sorry, Theresa!) this past week, and the other two are on the counter. But hey, it's really the prayer that counts, right?

The hours between 12 and 3 on Good Friday actually went surprisingly solemnly this year - the kids colored some pages I had found on Pinterest, we read the Passion and acted it out with this awesome block set from AlmondRod Toys (which the kids LOVE), and then my mom stayed home with the twins while Andrew and I took the older kids and Peter to the liturgy.

Jesus entered into Jerusalem, where the crowds waved palm branches and a giant box of crayons threatened to overtake him!

I let the kids help me make hot cross buns (I know, a sweet treat on Good Friday? But it was plenty penitential letting them help...)...

And they each got to eat one with dinner, and the rest we saved for Easter breakfast (and the rest of the week).

What DID we do on Saturday? Andrew had rehearsal in the morning...  Oh yeah, the twins got a stomach bug and so most of Saturday was spent dealing with that. Seems appropriate!

I already wrote about Easter somewhat - we also dyed eggs using a kit this year, since John Paul decided to spend some of his hard-earned money on a kit at the dollar store. Definitely easier than the natural dyes! But I love the science experiment aspect of the natural ones, so we'll see what we do in years to come.

I had finally gotten the twins down for naps and Peter down and everything set up when... Elizabeth woke up wailing from her nap. So my mom thankfully stepped in and supervised the dying!  As and Easter miracle, everybody decided they loved hard boiled eggs that day, and almost all of them got eaten.  The next day, everybody hated hard boiled eggs again...

Mary Claire was taking an epic nap, so I let the other kids have their Easter egg hunt while she slept.

John Paul even very sweetly traded Elizabeth his pink eggs for her green ones so that they could each have their favorite color. And made sure everybody got the same number of eggs! I'm not convinced he didn't eat the candy out of his before he traded, though...

(Mary Claire had her own egg hunt later - John Paul filled AND hid the eggs, and then shockingly she was convinced to share the candy!)

I had grand plans for celebrating the octave beyond that, which started off with an Easter egg hunt on Monday morning...

And then the plans quickly got thrown away, as the remaining kids succumbed to the stomach bug (even Peter!).

By Saturday they were all recovered, so we did the last craft I had planned for Easter - crayon-resist watercolor crosses:

They had other ideas.  #nailedit

We *did* get our Alleluia banners hung by the end of the octave! Cecilia spent over an hour on her very colorful banner, and John Paul got tired of his and gave up, only to finish it up the next day and STILL get tired and give up at the end. Which is why it just says "alleluia."

Rejoice. Or something. If you feel like it. Whatever.

Whew! If you made it through that doozy of a post, you're awesome! And now I have a giveaway for you:

When the kids were sick this past week, I really wanted to just sit them in front of the TV all day so that they would hold still and rest... But I knew I'd have to break them of that habit afterwards, and I was NOT looking forward to that. You know what really saved me? Our Glory Stories CDs!  The kids were happy to listen to those all week, and I didn't have to endure the whines for "MORE DORA!!!" once they got cut off!

In honor of Divine Mercy Sunday, I'm giving away a copy of the St. Faustina and Bl. Mother Teresa Glory Stories CD - all you have to do is leave a comment telling me either how you found this blog or how long you've been reading.  You've got until Saturday to enter! US only, please :)

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