Holy Week/Spring Break
This is the first year we've done a formal spring break during Holy Week. Usually we're travelling so much that breaks in the usual academic routine just happen naturally. This year we've been real homebodies though, and I decided we needed to slow down for a week! The girls were thrilled. We decided to go to the big downtown library for our weekly library visit and even spent some time in a little park along the water. We also had a few more friends able to come to our weekly park day! They spent their spare hours playing outside, reading books, playing chess, and working on art projects.

Daddy finally had time (and weather) to
install the new tree swing!

Fun times at our favorite park!

Holy Week at our current church was full of festivities. The children's choir sang on Palm Sunday, and the girls participated in two worship services. On Monday the girls and I continued a family tradition and started a new one: First, we bought several bouquets of fresh flowers to decorate our great room and study. Then we bought the contents of the Easter Feast Bowl, a big, sunny yellow communal serving bowl filled with everybody's favorite varieties of Easter candy (and later in the week the candy the girls got at the Easter egg hunt). We even purchased chocolate bunnies for everyone, including Potato's college buddies who'd be joining us for the weekend. We also popped into a craft store and came home with some Easter craft kits and activity books to keep the girls occupied during our lesson-free week.

On Maundy Thursday, the children's choir actually led worship for an event that involved simultaneous dinner and worship service. Their repertoire for the evening including a couple of Taize songs in English, one song in Latin, and another in sign language (the kids learned 52 ASL signs!). They did a fantastic job.

The Saturday before Easter was chock full of Easter activities. The Easter egg hunt at church proved to be an even bigger deal than we anticipated. Not only does our church give out 15,000 Easter eggs (between a Boys & Girls Club hunt on Friday and an open-to-the-public hunt on Saturday), but Saturday's event also involved a petting zoo, Easter crafts, shaped balloons, face painting, a selfie station, and a bubble garden.They had SO much fun! That afternoon we stayed home to dye a couple dozen Easter eggs and bake shaped bread for Easter breakfast.

Easter morning itself, the girls were very excited to wake up to the Easter feast they'd helped prepare! They dressed in their Easter finery for church and picked out flowers to place on our church's Cross of Flowers. The service was lovely, and included the excitement of additional instruments and the Hallelujah Chorus. We still had our Sunday family movie night, and while I didn't come up with an Easter movie, we did eat a traditional ham and green bean casserole kind of meal.

He is risen!