April Summary

So we've apparently neglected to document anything in the entire month of April. Wow. I'm going to chock this up to a very busy end-of-Lent and Holy Week. We did have two birthdays (mine and Erich's). Erich and I haven't normally celebrated our birthdays much, but given Elena's enjoyment of the festivities, we've stepped up our celebration of our own birthdays at my mother's prodding. For Erich's birthday, we made another whacky cake. This time, I cut out the letters "PAPA" out of fruit leather to decorate the cake. The Griffins gave him a gift of a strategy card came that he's been enjoying since. And the kids made him birthday cards. Young Liam Patrick's card included a rather good drawing of Saint Patrick on one side and Wall-E on the other. And it had shamrocks on the front of the card which were coloured red. ("Do you know why they're coloured red? For the Blood of Christ!" Liam told me.) For my birthday (in bright week this year!) my mother took us out to sushi (a birthday tradition from my childhood) and we got to have the Griffins over for cake that evening. Highly enjoyable.

We experienced our first Holy Week and Pascha with our current parish, St. Andrew's. It was a glorious experience that reminded me in a very pleasant way of our first parish in Illinois. We also had the joy of watching our friends the Griffins be baptized. They've been at this parish far longer than we have (two and a half years, I think), so it's strange to be reminded of how new they are in the faith--I forgot many times over this past year that they were catechumens. Elena slept in on Holy Saturday and missed seeing the baptisms per se (she arrived for the chrismations). She was highly upset to miss this experience and asked several times whether they would be baptized again so that she could see. We tried to explain that it just doesn't work that way... She was relatively consoled once we were able to show her pictures. And she very much enjoyed being able to hear the story of her own baptism.

Speaking of stories, she has been very interested in hearing stories lately. This started with "The Story of Mama in the Ambulance," which is the story of when I was hit by a bus and taken to the hospital in an ambulance. I'm not sure why Papa chose to tell her this story, but it has been frequently requested since then. I tried to take advantage of her love of stories during lent as well. Normally, when combing her hair after a shower or bath, we let her watch Ni Hao Kai Lan or Word World, but during lent I tried to tell her stories relating to the current happenings or recent feasts at church. She enjoys hearing about Lazarus being raised from the dead about as much as the Mama in the Ambulance story (although I think the most popular church story is the presentation of Mary in the Temple).

And the memory that prompted me to make a post in the first place: for a while (though not too much recently), when Elena would sing a song like Twinkle Twinkle, but when she would get to the end, she would end with...

"Now and ever and unto ages of ages, Amen."