Celebrating Easter 2016

We celebrated Easter on Sunday with our families and will continue the celebration for many more weeks!!  What a time for JOY in celebrating Our Risen Lord!  He has given Himself so fully for us and the JOY we feel is just so natural! How can we be anything but full of JOY?!!

We prepared for and celebrated in many ways.  Many of these are traditions that we have been doing for many years and they make this season so special!

**Holy Thursday liturgical tea and getting to attend my niece's First Holy Communion that evening!!

**Good Friday liturgical tea and Good Friday service at our church.  We also made Hot Cross Buns.

**On Holy Saturday, we went to an Easter egg hunt in the town where I grew up.  Yes, I know it wasn't quite Easter, but it's one of those traditions that even *I* did as a kid and we really wanted to pass this on to our own crew.  And, I'm fine with our kids getting this little bit of JOY before Easter. We also made our very first Paschal Candle!!  And we colored Easter eggs that night.  And (yeah, it was a busy day!), I also made our Lamb cake!

**Easter morning Mass!!!  Our oldest boys served and our oldest girls sang in the choir.  It's so strange to sit in a pew with only four of our kids!  We only take up half a pew!!  Then we were able to celebrate with both of our families! All my siblings and their husbands, my husbands brother and his wife, both sets of our parents, and all the cousins. Blessed beyond belief to be with our loved ones and to see the JOY of Jesus living in each one of us!!

And a blurry selfie picture of Neil and I, after we took off our "Easter Egg" church clothes.  And after having Skirted It Up for Lent, you can bet that I happily changed into jeans for our two Easter parties that day!

**SING!!!  Sing your little hearts out!!  Make a joyful noise!  We learned a new song on Easter and we have all been singing it.  I had to record sweet Rose singing it....

And a great song that has many "Alleluia's" in it!  Great since we have been fasting from singing Alleluia for 40 days!!

I hope and pray you have a beautiful and blessed Easter season!!!