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.

Celebrating the Ascension

Well, I am getting around to putting these pictures up now... we celebrated the Ascension on Thursday of last week and continued on into Friday! Then we heard the readings for the Ascension on Sunday at Mass.

On Thursday, the girls made pictures much like Caroline did last year. They painted "clouds" with white poster paint on blue construction paper.

As with any art project, Cecilia really got into it for a two year old!

Caroline made her clouds a bit more cloud-like. She is also getting into making her own artistic creations lately, drawing and cutting and taping things together... most recently, she made a pinata out of paper and yarn for her little barn animals, and she taped chicken feathers to a pen so that she could be like "Fancy Nancy," a book character.

Then we glued an image of the Ascension in the middle of each painting. We hung them in the dining room.

On Friday, we planned to go to the park to meet friends and play before having an Ascension picnic for lunch. However, one family was sick, and the others had things come up, so we went on our own. On the menu for our easy Ascension picnic:

Cloud-shaped sandwiches. I just cut out the clouds freehand as shown above. A cookie cutter would be even easier (and might look better, too! ;).

Fluffy, white (er, light brown) clouds, since Jesus appeared to be rising up into the clouds

Then we had some cheese shaped like birds - it is traditional in some countries to eat some sort of bird on the Feast of the Ascension because Jesus "flew" to Heaven. I did use a cookie cutter for these (and you may see this shape reappear as a dove-shaped cookie at Pentecost this Sunday!).

We stopped at Kroger on the way to get some milk since we were out, so I thought we'd also see how much a couple helium balloons would cost. It turns out that they will give you helium balloons with the Kroger logo on them for free, so we got two of them! Then, the milk safely in one of those special "stays cold for three hours" bags, we headed to the park!

I think I may have mentioned before in another post that my Catholic elementary school used to celebrate Ascension Thursday each year by having a balloon release. All the kids would release balloons all together to symbolize Jesus rising up toward Heaven. We wrote prayers and notes on notecards and attached them to the balloon strings. I think we even wrote our addresses in the hopes that somebody would find our balloon and write to let us know! It was always lots of fun, I thought. A few weeks ago, I told Caroline the story of how we used to do this, and she wanted to do it as well. We hadn't planned to originally, because of having lots of little ones there (balloons are really unsafe around toddlers who might put a popped piece into their mouths... and I thought that some of them might get really upset at having to let their balloons go!).

This Ascension Thursday balloon release sponsored by Kroger

Watching the balloons drift higher and higher... you should have heard the giggles of excitement!

Cecilia looks worried in this picture, but she really wasn't. She is relatively laid back about this kind of thing... she actually had a balloon at a local event the weekend before this, and when it bumped against something and popped, Caroline was more distressed than she was! She kept saying that we could get an airplane and fly up to the balloons, though! I was surprised that caroline wanted to do this in the first place... she is usually very sensitive (once she cried and complained for a half hour after a balloon broke, insisting that I could just make another on magically reappear... and that was only a month ago!). I guess she was okay with it because she knew what the plan was for the balloons from the beginning.

And I thought I would share this photo of Cecilia's dirt-covered face while we ate lunch. The kids played hard!! We did end up running into two families there who we knew, and we all had lunch together.

We had a fun time celebrating the Ascension, and now I hope no environmentalists blast me for letting two balloons go on purpose! ;)

Ascension Thursday

Thursday marked the day that we celebrate Jesus's return to heaven, which means we are nearing the end of the Easter season. We will officially celebrate it on Sunday, although it is known in the Church as "Ascension Thursday" and the feast is typically moved to the following Sunday. In my parochial school when I was growing up, we used to release helium balloons with notes tied to the strings on this day, to symbolize Jesus going up to heaven. We stopped doing it after several years (darn those environmentalists ;)... Tim, did you even get to experience the fun of a 500-balloon release Ascensions Thursday?? It was great fun, except for the few kids whose balloons would inevitably end up caught in a tree or power line only seconds after being released...

So, we refrained from a balloon release, although maybe that is an idea to keep in mind for future years. Instead, Caroline did some cloud painting with white paint, a cotton ball, and her fingers. Then she stuck an image of a painting of the ascension (which she cut out herself) to the clouds.

I also found this cute little craft online... if I can remember where, I will post the link. Caroline colored Jesus, the apostles, a cloud, and the background and then we cut them out and I attached them together... the result is that Jesus slides up and down so Caroline can make him rise up into the skiy, and the apostles slide back and forth (for some reason - maybe so they can pace back and forth?). We have used both these things as visuals in our dining room.

We also did this rhyme and finger play (which I was randomly inspired with late Wednesday evening):

Jesus ascended into the sky. (point finger upward)
All his apostles waved goodbye. (waving motion with hand)
Jesus said, "Across the world you must go," (spread out arms wide)
"Spreading the Good News so all may know." (cup hands around mouth, then point to head)

And we made this dessert Thursday morning - I called in Ascension Cloud Cake. It is completely no-bake - it is frozen. Nice for warmer weather, and very easy.

Here it is cut open... yummy!

So, we had a fun day celebrating the ascension! Everything sort of fell together for us in celebrating this feast... we don't always manage to do this much. Each thing was little and didn't take much time, so it ended up being very do-able. I have heard it mentioned that some people read blogs and get discouraged because of seeing what other people do in their homes to celebrate feast days... because it looks like they have perfect families with these great plans that go so smoothly all the time. And I have also seen it discussed that this is because people typically put the best things that happen on their blogs rather than blogging the messes and whining and other things that may happen day-to-day with small children. This is quite true. What you do not see behind these photos and words are the frequent temper tantrums Cecilia had all day, and that she did not take a nap. It was almost cute for awhile when she threw her little fits... until this day, when they came one after another, ha ha! She decides she wants to play with the toy lawnmower that Caroline is playing with and expresses this by shrieking and running towards it... so Caroline very politely steps aside and takes the other toy lawnmower for herself... and of course, Cecilia immediately decides she wants that lawnmower instead! This went back and forth a couple times until ! scooped Cecilia up, told her how hard it is to be one, and we went inside! So, we'll probably have some difficult days as she goes through this developmental phase and beginning to learn that life has limitations and disappointments. A tough lesson for anyone to learn at any age, poor baby ;) She'll make it, though, especially if that huge molar will finish breaking through her gum!