Good Friday 2009

A blessed God Friday to everyone. For today, we are staying at home. Caroline expressed a desire to go to the Stations of the Cross at our church at 3:00 today, followed by Veneration of the Cross, but I didn't think that was the wisest idea for me to take her and Cecilia by myself. When we have attended the Stations in the evenings throughout Lent, it has been do-able since Chris came then. Let's just say that Cecilia isn't quite as, ah, riveted by the Stations as her big sister. We'd end up in the vestibule for most of it, I am sure, which would be disappointing to Caroline since she would have to come with me. So, we are having out own Good Friday observances here at home. Caroline watched a bit of the Good Friday service from the Vatican on EWTN streaming video this morning... and for the next hour, I got to listen to her own rendition of Latin chanting, ha ha. Is my child speaking in tongues??? Maybe we will do our own Stations here this afternoon using Caroline's Stations of the Cross box.

Yesterday, we made hot cross buns, which are traditionally eaten on Good Friday. I wanted them to be ready to reheat and eat for breakfast the next morning. Fitting this in with the day of fasting has been interesting. Of course, my girls are not obligated to observe the fast until they are 14 years old, so Caroline has eaten quite a few hot cross buns today! For me, I am doing a modified fast, since I am breastfeeding. I have had 2 hot cross buns for both breakfast and lunch, along with a half cup of yogurt at breakfast and a part of a banana (Cecilia ate/played with the rest of it!) at lunch.

Caroline helped shape the dough into balls as we chanted (over and over and over):

Hot Cross Buns, Hot Cross Buns
One a penny, two a penny
Hot Cross Buns
If your daughters won't eat them, give them to your sons
One a penny, two a penny
Hot Cross Buns

If I stopped chanting after going through the song three or four times, Caroline would ask, "Is that the end, Mommy?" "Well, it's only the end if you want it to be,"was my response. Oops. We went on and on and on...

Caroline really liked the icing part, of course. They were supposed to be iced 15 minutes after being removed from the oven - according to the recipe, too hot and the icing will run off, and too cool and the icing won't stick. Well, our icing ran off a bit, but not too badly. This recipe came from my new favorite whole grains cookbook - same place I got the pretzel recipe - and they were excellent! I think the raisins soaked in a tablespoon of rum really made these stand out!

Caroline was excitedly waiting for the buns to cool enough so she could try one! I figured we could have one or two on Holy Thursday and save the rest for Good Friday. I always like to try baked goods fresh from the oven, but honestly, these tasted just as good reheated in the microwave today! That is not typical in my experience with whole wheat breads. these were about half whole wheat and half unbleached white flour.


I ordered a book about Lent for Caroline several weeks ago from Amazon, and it still hasn't shown up. Fortunately, the Easter books I ordered for her and Cecilia have arrived, ready to be put in their baskets for Easter Sunday. But, the My First Catechism book did arrive yesterday, so we read through some of it while we enjoyed our afternoon snack of hot cross buns. When we got to a part about Jesus's death, Caroline said, "Look - here is a part about Lent!"

Yesterday, Caroline came up with the idea on her own to make some crosses out of sticks. So we collected some sticks in the yard in the afternoon and saved them for today. While we were collecting sticks, Caroline also decided to make Jesus on the cross. She was very creative and found a rock for his head, a thick stick for his body, and smaller sticks for arms and legs. She even found a thin pine tree twig that was bristly and wanted to use it for the crown of thorns. So this morning, we used the glue gun to assemble it. Caroline wanted to have her Mary figure nearby, as you can see in the photo. We will use this crucifix today and place it on our table or maybe the china cabinet, and then maybe we will hang it on the wall later to just use as a wall-hanging crucifix.

Perhaps on Easter morning, I will replace this crucifix with one of the plain crosses we made (pictured at the very top of this post) adorned with flowers! Maybe this will make the resurrection more impressive in Caroline's mind (as she is quite fascinated with the death part currently!).