Pentecost 2012

We began Pentecost Sunday with a special treat for breakfast: donuts from our newly-opened Daylight Donuts, which is located just a couple minutes from our house (dangerous, no?).  I picked these up the afternoon before and got an assortment of white donuts, since Pentecost is also known as Whitsunday ("whit" meaning white).  The dove is the sign of the Holy Spirit and is white as well, although the original name I believe came from the newly baptized members of the Church who again would dress in their white clothing for Pentecost... not sure what years this was the custom.  We had our red tablecloth out since red is the liturgical color of the day.

I have to brag on my children a little here... they both came up with their own spontaneous and creative projects to celebrate the day!  Caroline began painting a watercolor of the first Pentecost.

Cecilia took a cork and toothpicks and made them into a dove, and then she asked to paint it.

She put three toothpicks on each side spreading out to be wings and three in back to make a tail.  She broke another toothpick and used half for a beak which was then painted yellow.

She asked me to dab eyes on with black paint.

Maybe it's just because I'm her mom, but I thought this was very abstract and creative for a four year old.  I love that it doesn't have to look "perfect" to Cecilia; she just does things the way she wants and is pleased with the results.

Here's our table, all ready for dinner... our apostle cupcakes are on the table waiting for dessert!  For dinner we also had white foods: chicken, potato scones (oh wow, these things are so, so very good!!), and roasted cabbage.  

I didn't dig out our typical dove ornaments this year, but these little guys from Lucy's baptism party made an appearance in Caroline's ballet recital bouquet, which was still on the table.

Our other centerpieces were last year's homemade Pentecost candle (see the yellow doves on it, sort of?) and Cecilia's dove.

Caroline's watercolor painting was hung on the china cabinet.  I love how detailed she was with it... all 12 apostles plus Mary are included, and each has a tongue of fire over the head!

We sand "Happy Birthday" to the Church and lit the candles on the cupcakes: 12 white and one blue to represent the apostles plus Mary.  We did't have enough candles for each apostle to have a tongue of fire, oops.  Then the girls blew them out, symbolic of the rushing wind that was heard when the tongues of fire appeared over the apostles' heads.  Another oops: noticing in the background that we didn't change the priest's vestments to red!

The cupcakes were dark chocolate with a cream cheese frosting.  It was entertaining to hear them deciding to split the blue cupcake since they both wanted Mary.  Ha ha!

And here's our Easter season countdown, all complete!  We didn't do as much Easter season celebrating this year, still having a young baby... but we made sure to end the season on Pentecost with a bang!