Easter 2012 in Pictures

This year's Easter baskets - chocolate crosses, Reese's eggs, Trader Joe's jelly beans, Catholic stickers (from the Dollar Tree!), sidewalk chalk, and new books

Cecilia's basket

Caroline's basket (was my mom's first!)

Lucy's basket - I always have a hard time finding a basket for each kid... they can't all share the awesome hand-me-down.  Got this one at Target.  Yes, Lucy got nothing for Easter - I'm so mean to not give a six month old candy.  Hey, I bought her a Sophie the Giraffe on eBay the other day (it was used), that counts, right?  It's just too late for it to be in her basket Easter morning, but I'm sure it'll arrive before Pentecost and she'll never know the difference... poor third-born, hee hee.

Resurrection rolls... the empty tomb.  Excuse Caroline's bangs; they are growing out right now...

Cecilia is the one who helped me make them the day before.

After Easter Mass in the prayer garden outside our church

Cecilia poses by our Lent/Easter figure scene... we re-enacted Good Friday with it, and this morning Jesus had risen from the tomb!

This post has close-ups of the figures.

And now for an endless stream of cute baby pics... it's my blog, so I can brag about how cute I think she is all I want, right?

My mom made this dress and bonnet.  For me.  32 years ago!!  It is still in beautiful shape.  I wore it for my first Easter, and Caroline wore it for her second Easter (since she was only 6 days old on her first Easter!).  I thought Cecilia wore it for Easter too, but I looked back at pics and she didn't - boo.  She did get professional portraits made in it at about 8 month, though.  So, Lucy and I are the only ones who wore it on our first Easters.

Click to see a close-up... the smocking on the bonnet matches the smocking on the dress.  I want my mom to start smocking again!!

not real eggs...

anyone know how to get stiff drooled-on ribbon clean without putting it through the washer??

hunting for eggs... one of the most low-action events in our family.  My kids have to be encouraged greatly to actually LOOK for the eggs.  They seem to expect them to just jump out into their baskets, it seems!

back of the bonnet... so cute!!

more egg-hunting

opening the resurrection eggs and retelling the story

The girls and I made nest treats on Saturday... complete with "puff birds."  We made another batch with blue candy melts, and they were prettier...

Cecilia shook up a baggie of coconut and a couple drops of green food coloring for the Easter grass in the blue nests.

Then she filled them with candy "eggs."  Notice her chocolate-covered face?

the finished nests... pretty and yummy!

Golden Easter Punch

Sure, this might look all festive, but really it's a big fail.  The reason I had to make this is because I actually began dyeing the eggs before I hard-boiled them - duh.  So, I remembered that to make Easter Nest bread, you use uncooked dyed eggs.  So... I took some of the resurrection roll dough and quickly made this.  It sat uncooked in the fridge and then we cooked it on Sunday.  We had plenty to eat, so we didn't even have this with our dinner really, but the eggs did cook in the oven - very cool.  And even though I started heating the oven both while the resurrection roll dough was rising AND the next day when this was rising, I didn't kill the bread - or set the oven on fire.

random "legless baby" shot

She did this to herself, I swear.

We all laughed and watched.  

And then she finally got it off by herself.

My parents and brother Tim came for Easter dinner, of which I ate entirely too much.  

Happy Pentecost!

AS we have done in years past, we hung up our doves above the dining room table. The dove is a symbol of the Holy Spirit, which came to the apostles at Pentecost!

The girls made a windsock this year... red is the liturgical color, so the body of windsock is red. The streamers are yellow with orange tips, symbolizing the tongues of fire which came to rest above the heads of the apostles and Mary. We used the flames shared at Shower of Roses - thanks, Jessica!

Caroline cut out the flames, which had the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit printed on them. Cecilia drew a picture on the windsock... you can sort of see that she drew Mary in blue and a huge dove (on top of Mary) in white.

Caroline also drew this picture. She and Cecilia were pretending to be the apostle John and Mary. They even cut out "tongues of fire" from orange paper and taped them to their foreheads! :)

~Breakfast~

Pentecost is also known as "Whitsunday," meaning "white Sunday." So I made a special white drink, homemade vanilla steamers... like Starbucks sells for a few bucks apiece, but easily made at home! I also considered making white hot chocolate... mmm, the Paula Dean recipe I found for that was made with four cups of heavy cream (as I expected it would be ;)!

The girls drank them out of our white china teacups!

~Dinner~

Our centerpieces: a red candle with yellow dove shapes on it (made from a beeswax candle kit), a few Holy Spirit holy cards, and our paschal candle, lit for the last day of the Easter Season! I suppose we will bring it back out to light when we celebrate Baby 3's baptism, since the paschal candle at church will be lit then in order to light the baptismal candles.

We set the table with our red tablecloth.

Our salad had bell pepper "tongues of fire" in it!

We also had a 12 fruit salad, to represent the 12 fruits of the Holy Spirit. I think there were actually only 10 or 11 fruits... shh, don't tell! ;)

Our doves, soaring above the celebration

I gave the girls tiny red pinwheels to blow... on Pentecost, there was a sound of a mighty rushing wind (which is the reason for the windsock as well).

Here are our cupcakes... we have done this for three years now, and I don't think Caroline would stand for anything different, as it has become a favorite tradition! I first saw this idea on By Sun and Candlelight... the 13 cupcakes represent Mary and the 12 apostles (Mary being the one with blue sprinkles!). The lit candles on each cupcake represent the tongues of fire above each one. They also remind us that Pentecost is a birthday - the birthday of the Church!

So, we sing "Happy Birthday" to the Church...

...and blow out the candles!

These were chocolate chip cupcakes with maple cream cheese frosting... yum! They are a recipe in the Deceptively Delicious cookbook - made with pureed yellow squash and pumpkin! Cecilia actually eats most of the cupcake and not just the frosting off th top of these, ha ha!

We finished our Garden of the Good Shepherd Easter calendar! We passed on the Garden Party this week since we were already having our Pentecost celebration. The girls enjoyed the Easter season and will be sad to go back to Ordinary Time, but it will be a nice change for everyone!