This was an unusually difficult Lent for me. Most of it was spent with a newborn...thus I spent almost all of Lent in the newborn fog. Sleep deprived, managing post-op pain, hormonal....I could go on and on. But I won't. And with cold and flu season being so horrible, I barely left the house with Jonah. Church was out of the question. On top of missing mass for much of Lent, I also didn't do any Lenten fasting as I just couldn't muster up the self-discipline in my state. I have definitely been in a funk. A spiritual rut. Still, it is no excuse in my mind. A sweet friend did try to console me with the notion that having a newborn is enough of a sacrifice. As nice as that sounds, I didn't feel absolved of my slacker-ness. I will be needing an intense reconciliation session in the near future.
Easter was quickly approaching, and I realized how much I had let go undone. I usually spend time with the boys, especially Eli, in preparation for Holy Week, but once again...I dropped the ball. I have let go of feeling guilty about it, but I wanted to be sure that despite my lack of energy and daily distractions, I would do my best to make finding some Easter Joy a priority for us all.
On Saturday, we did our usual Easter Egg Hunt with a local church. Both boys thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Jude's age group was up first, and he was itchin' to get started. He knew what to do this year and was pleased once he had collected 10 or 15. I love the lack of competitive nature at this innocent age.
Just go out and get what you want. And be happy as a clam about it all.
Eli was ready to go after that, and yes, this group was beyond ready. It was amazing how quickly the field was swept of all of the eggs.
And despite Eli's incredibly competitive nature, he was genuinely happy about how many he got. It was a pleasure to see his joyful spirit this day.
As always, there was a lot of other fun to be had besides just the egg hunts. The boys enjoyed it all.
Back at the house, we had some more fun with our annual egg dying. Eli and I experimented with some techniques while Jude napped, but once he was up, he was thrilled to join in the egg-stravaganza (sorry....that was bad.) Both boys really got into it and dyed and redyed the eggs. Once the eggs were all colored, they went back and dunked them some more. Lots and lots of creative fun.
I will say that the "egg in the whisk" idea was the best durn idea for egg dying....we barely broke any.
Despite our continued efforts to downsize holiday madness, the boys still ended up with some baskets with awesome goodies. Still too many, probably. On Easter morning, the big brothers were beyond excited to find the house littered with eggs. The Easter Bunny hid some pretty tough ones this year. He must have known that Eli was ready for the challenge.
We had plans to attend the evening service at church, so we celebrated that morning with a late family brunch at my sister's house. We doubled up and celebrated Aunt Kristi's birthday too. And even though I had high hopes for some Easter Joy making its way into our hearts, our day went more like this:
Blame it on sugar, the excitement, the lack of Godly focus....whatever. All I will say is that this was not an Easter for the memory books. We had some catastrophic meltdowns that I'd just rather forget. I did what I could to get the boys outside that afternoon and distract them enough to turn their moods around. I didn't have much luck.
To their credit, after our incredibly long and difficult day, the boys did cooperate for me as I quickly snapped some after church pictures.
Note: These pictures were taken at around 8 pm and pre-dinner after they had just sat through an Easter service. Not too shabby, boys. Not too shabby.
Some goofy pictures always help me get a good one in the mix...not to mention, they make the best pictures too. Yay for outtakes!
Jonah's first Easter!
I think that this little bunny is going to have blue eyes....what do you think?
And no matter how badly the day went, it is still easy to love these incredibly dapper and adorable stinkers.
All three boys have my heart.
We are blessed. That is all the Easter Joy I need.
Hosanna! Alleluia!! Christ is risen. He is risen, indeed!
No comments:
Post a Comment