Ascension Thursday

Like we did last year, we released balloons to symbolized Jesus rising up in the air and returning to heaven. I love that Kroger gives out free balloons, and we already happened to be on that side of town for an appointment already!

We released them at home this year rather than in the park, seeing as we'd just had three pines removed from the yard and had more open space... On the count of three, they let go of their balloons... and we didn't expect that there would be this strong of a breeze to carry them sideways, because we sure didn't feel it ourselves!

Cecilia's balloon blew right into the branches of some pine trees. Good thing she's pretty mellow about that kind of thing - it didn't faze her. Caroline's balloon made it just over the trees and this is the last view we had of it. She had attached a note that had a brief prayer written on it.

While I made dinner, the girls worked on a craft idea I saw pictured on Catholic Icing. Cecilia took it upon herself to cut out the image of Jesus that she colored. She did pretty well, and she is the type who is proud enough that she did it herself not to mind that she cut off some of his fingers. ;) This was also before she was banned from scissor use due to cutting holes and strips out of a dress-up skirt... "I wanted to make dots on it!" was her explanation.

Caroline pulls the string through her cup... at this point we stopped the craft and had dinner, followed by...

..."cloud" dessert! This is yummy... Chris and I ate most of it ourselves!

It has strawberries on the inside. As you can see, we let the girls eat some of the "cloud," too.

Here they are the next day with the finished crafts: the blue cups have cotton ball "clouds" glued on them to make a sky. Then the cut out image of Jesus ascending is taped to one end of a string, and the other end is pulled up through a hole in the cup to simulate His rising into the sky. Simple and symbolic.