50/52: Gaudete, St. Lucy, and Snow Day!

I asked for nice faces for a picture on Gaudete Sunday... That's the best I got. I'm fairly certain you can actually measure the amount of mischief present in these children based on their facial expressions alone. Little imps! I do love them, though they were absolutely terrible at Mass... Lucy was in rare form, and everyone was egging her on, including Peter who told her to go out of the pew at which point she made a break for the altar, only to be quickly caught by Cecilia. The rest of Mass consisted of one of us taking her out to get her calm, bringing her back in, and having her almost immediately start hollering whatever song came to mind at that particular moment. Needless to say, she's not going to be invited back every week (sometimes we can leave her home with Grandma and it's glorious not to have to deal with a loud toddler!).

We celebrated our new godson's baptism later, and then returned home to celebrate Lucy's feast day with the same cookies we made last year (though with blackberry jam this year, because we missed raspberry season and didn't put up any raspberry jam), and the evening procession with candles was much prettier than a morning procession! We have never tried waking up before the sun because truly there is no liturgical or cultural tradition that's going to convince me to give up any sleep. No thank you. But Mary Claire fit in the dress this year and was our Lucia bride, even though we still didn't manage to procure a red sash and tied Andrew's Liverpool scarf around her waist! She and Cecilia cut greenery from the yard and made her crown, as well as a doll-sized crown and decorations for all the candles. 

Then we got our first snow of the season on Wednesday! It fell all day long and ended up being about 9 inches, I think? Perfect for playing and sledding, and the kids absolutely loved it... Except Lucy, who thinks it's beautiful and begs to be taken out, only to start sobbing because it's hard to walk in and she just wants to be picked up. She was not impressed with the sleds. She did NOT want to eat the snow. She was QUITE angry that there was snow on her boots. And this is why I don't bother spending money on real snow gear for toddlers! They're so fickle!

Everybody else loved sledding though, and I'm glad I picked up a ton last winter even though we didn't get the chance to use them until this year. The hillside that our neighbor cleared is absolutely perfect for sledding since we haven't planted anything there yet, so the kids made multiple sled runs, including one with a rather jarring jump... Not something I would want to try, but they had a blast! Who knows if we'll get any other snow this winter, but I think we got a lot of mileage out of this snowfall!