Easter Triduum

This week has been pretty busy. Most of the week was spent looking at houses and then making an offer on a house. We also went to the Magic House again with Katee and got to explore some new areas! But, as promised, Isidora got to wear some new dresses for the Triduum!

Here is Izzie playing with her letter magnets at Nanny and Papa's before we head out to Holy Thursday mass at the Cathedral Basilica.

On Friday we heard back from our realtor that our offer had been accepted on the house in the Morning, and then later in the afternoon we took Isidora to Good Friday Service. Fortunately, Juanita was able to come with us, because Isidora was quite a handful during the veneration. Nanny was able to take her outside for a while (the veneration lasted 45 minutes with all the people there) during which Matt and I were able to have some quiet prayerful time inside.

Isidora ready for Good Friday (minus shoes), complete with pig tails! Thanks again to Godfather Greg for the beautiful outfit!

On Saturday, we decided that since Easter Vigil mass was not going to start until 8:30 pm, and Izzie is in bed most of the time at 7 pm, we were going to have Grant and Juanita keep her overnight at their house and Matt and I would go to the Vigil alone. But before we left, we were able to participate in Easter egg dying.

We made some pretty neat eggs this year I think.

One of Katee's striped eggs.

One of the speckled eggs made with food coloring with all of the eggs in the background.

Matt and I had a wonderful time at Easter Vigil, and we were both very glad we left Isidora with his parents since we didn't even get home until 11:45 pm. But, we felt that Isidora really should go to Easter Mass, so we decided to go with her again at the 8 am service Easter morning. Unfortunately Izzie was kind of on a funky schedule secondary to sleeping somewhere different and waking up 2 hours earlier than normal and so she was pretty tired - which meant that she was a wiggle worm during the whole Mass. Oh well.

After mass we headed back over to Grant and Juanita's to celebrate Easter.

Here is Izzie's Easter basket, complete with Libs chocolate - a family tradition from my mom's side of the family.

After Izzie took a nap (she fell asleep on the 10 minute drive back to Grant and Juanita's), Isidora got to go Easter egg hunting! She loved it! She was a natural. She already likes picking things up and putting them in a basket or something of that sort, so this was a breeze for her. She had such a great time.

Isidora finding Easter eggs in the grass wearing her Easter dress and hat. (Thanks Grandma!)

Thank you Mr. Gnome!

Are there any more eggs over here?

Here is one!

Check out all of my eggs!

Let me show you, Nanny.

We got Isidora a baby carrier for her baby doll.

And we went for a walk after brunch (breakfast tacos and mimosa!) and Izzie got to try out her new carrier.

Auntie Katee got Isidora some bubbles for Easter and we had lots of fun blowing and popping bubbles.

After opening baskets and hunting for eggs, we spent some time on the deck. Isidora that these potted evergreens (Uncle Ben's bonzai trees) needed more dirt in them, so she took dirt from some failed tomato seedlings on the other side of the deck and put them in the pot. This occupied her for about 20 minutes or so! It was a blast to watch.

Too much moss, not enough dirt!

Getting more dirt.

Hmm, a bit more dirt, I think.

I wonder what this tastes like. (She did try it eventually, and she didn't like it.)

I think I will just eat some worms instead. (More Easter candy from Auntie Katee.)

As always, we also had a very lovely Easter dinner made by Matt's dad, Grant. For the last couple of days, he has been soaking a country ham to rehydrate it and decrease some of the salt content. I have ever only had a country ham at the Colvin house. They are very salty, but pretty tasty. The ham he was able to get was huge, I think he said it was about 20 lbs to begin with, but he had to cut it into 3 sections because it was simply too big. He ended up cooking about 13 lbs of it today (the main 10 lb portion and a 3 lb shank).

Grant cooked the ham outside on the grill so that the oven could be used for other things, and so that the house would not get so warm.

Here is the complete meal set up buffet-style. We had the ham with an apple cider reduction raisin sauce, some pan fried okra, dinosaur kale, and sweet potato fries. We also had home made buttermilk biscuits and home made pickles, pickled onions and pickled okra. For dessert we had bread pudding with a whiskey sauce. It was great!

Izzie got to have a chocolate lollipop from Auntie Katee for dessert. Spoiled rotten.


Happy Easter! He is risen!