East-over 2013

Once again in our family Easter and Passover collide and are celebrated/remembered together. We had fun this year celebrating with both sides of the family and our neighbors, plus church in one day!! Marathon holidays tend to be the way we roll. 

This year we also got to experience 2 different Good Friday services. I went to the first ever GF service at our church and they did over 50 baptisms! It was wonderful!!!! Chris got to join our neighbors at their Byzantine Orthodox Catholic Church which was a somber liturgy fitting for Good Friday. Very different but both good preparation for the enormously significant celebration of Easter. 

Thanks also to our neighbors we learned the true origins of dyeing Easter eggs! Ironically, 30 minutes before we learned about this, we had JUST made up our own loose connection between eggs and new life and Jesus to explain to the kids why we were dyeing eggs. So, the real story is that way back in the day when Christians were proselytizing they came to pagan villages and as a way to effectively communicate about Christ, they'd learn some of the cultural rituals and weave the bible into them. So, when people used eggs as a symbol to celebrate new life in spring, the Christians began to decorate the eggs with Christian messages, concepts to communicate in a way that was already part of the people's culture. Our engines have books full of the elaborate designs and what they mean (every picture has deep symbolism) AND our neighbor Chuck has eggs he's painted that look like they should be in a museum! They're amazing and done with special tools and layers of wax on RAW, fragile eggs that had then blows out when the design in complete. Really impressive. So blessed to have our Easter enriched by new friends this year!

My matzoh ball soup helper :-)

Easter/Passover Part 1

Easter weekend was FULL for us. One of the challenging parts about living near both of our families is that holidays are BUSY! However, it was a blessed weekend!

On Saturday we made food for a Passover Seder with my side of the family, dyed eggs, went to an Easter service at my parents church, then had the "Seder" (they're very reformed Jews...so we only do a few parts of a genuine Seder) at my grandmother's. Whew!


Ella was good at rolling out the Matzo Balls!


And she was very proud when we were done!


Next, on to egg dying when Aunt Marissa arrived


This time Ella chose to make Glitter Eggs which turned out to be MESSSSSSY


"Ta da!"


For some reason, this is the only pic I have from my grandmother's house but this pretty much summarizes it-eating, chatting, Ella playing with salt :-)

Easter Sunday still to come...

Mother's Day (numero dos)

After church we went to my grandmother's house for a belated Passover Seder/Mother's Day celebration :-)


My grandmother striking a pose-she is SO hysterical!

Ella was so excited for me to read the card she and Chris gave me.


Finally! A recent pic of Chris and me!

Ella found the "afikoman" (hidden matzo-part of the passover tradition)

It's really fun to do all of the same things I grew up doing and passing on the traditions :-)