Recent Holy Day Celebrations

We had a few feast days recently and did some simple things to remember them... last Thursday was the Solemnity of the Annunciation (March 25, nine months before Jesus's birth is celebrated). I did the same thing as last year: printed off several images of the Annunciation for Caroline to cut out and glue into a collage. Cecilia colored on a picture of the Annunciation found here. Lots of coloring images available there... I bookmarked the master list for future use! In the afternoon, the girls helped me to plant marigold seeds in cups. They have started to grow already!

For lunch we had lily sandwiches, found here at Catholic Cuisine. The lily is one of many flowers associated with Mary... I think that this sandwich would work well for many saints, like St. Joseph, who is typically pictured holding lilies.

Caroline ate three or four of them!!

Cecilia liked them too, but not as much... her appetite has slowed down recently, it seems.

Then we celebrated Palm Sunday this past Sunday, the day after Caroline's party. Sometimes Palm Sunday is referred to as "Fig Sunday," because legend has it that Jesus ate figs after riding into Jerusalem. So, I made our favorite fig bar recipe, using up the last of the dried figs from last year. Our fig tree should be growing us some figs over this spring and summer!

Along with our dinner, we had heart of palm salad. I don't know how my children could dislike heart of palm - it has such a mild, bland flavor. But Chris and I ate it! It is just lettuce, strawberries, heart of palm, mandarin oranges, pecans, and poppy seed salad dressing. Yum! It is an easy way to incorporate palm into a meal!

We also thought about burning last year's palms, since we didn't on Ash Wednesday, but we didn't get around to that... maybe we'll do it sometime during Holy Week and put the ashes into our garden! We did get new palms at church and placed them behind a crucifix in our home.