Easter, Holy Water, and Bedtime Battle

Let's just jump on in, shall we? 

1.) I wrote a post about scruples and spiritual reading. 

And it took off. 

Well, took off for me. I usually average about 100 hits a post (and generally only on these quick take posts...others usually hit around 50), this one is around 300 hits. 

I guess a lot more people suffer from scruples than I thought. I don't write about it super often, but it seems like there's a need for more stuff out there about it. 

2.) Easter - Holy Saturday

 We basically did what I laid out in my last post for vigil (homemade paschal candle, renewal of baptismal vows, and watched The Miracle Maker with party food), and then went to my Sister in Law's house Sunday morning. 

I spent literally all Saturday on my feet cooking and baking. That is NOT something I recommend doing for eight month pregnant ladies, though I did turn out some pretty tasty stuff. But two very complex, takes-all- day-because- it-has-to-rise-four-times bread recipes (Italian egg bread and two---TWO---sourdough coffee cake rings) plus homemade pretzel dogs, 7 layer dip, queso, cut up fruit, and resurrection rolls (oh...and we dyed eggs in there somewhere too) was just a BAD idea. I ended up semi-catatonic for the rest of the evening, just absolutely fried to a crisp. 

I'm not sure how I'm going to pare it down next year, but I think I'm going to have to for the sake of my sanity and physical health. Or maybe make more stuff ahead and freeze it or something. 

On the upside, we still have an entire coffee cake ring sitting in the fridge. I'll probably do something with that on Divine Mercy Sunday morning. 

3.) Holy Water

We got to go to mass on Easter Sunday (which was lovely) and refilled holy water bottles. 

Interesting tidbit...I didn't know this, but apparently holy water has an expiration date. After we had lit the candle and I was serving the kids food on Saturday night, Chris took the bottle we'd used to sprinkle ourselves and the kids when we renewed our baptismal vows and said, "I'm going to go use this up around the yard." 

"Why?" 

"Because it's Holy Saturday!" 

Apparently, it's customary for a lot of parishes to take all their remaining holy water and pour it out in the shape of a big cross in the church parking lot before they do Easter vigil. Go figure. 

So we have this year's stock of holy water in the house now. Someday when I have my act together I'd like to try to put a small font somewhere in the house, but I'm not sure how to pull that off without it turning into messy bedlam. In the meantime, it is super helpful for when the kids are sick or suffering from nightmares and I like to keep a bottle of it in my purse (I may or may not have sprinkled it on a random car in the HEB parking lot that had a satanic symbol doodled in the dust on it once). 

4.) Sister-In-Law's House 

After mass, we headed over to my SIL's house to visit with Chris's family. 

It went pretty well. Most of his family is vaccinated at this point (at least, the most vulnerable and most exposed people are), so it was more or less...normal. Which was surreal in a way, but we were all deeply thankful for it. It was nice getting to hug people again. 

We all ate a ton of food, the kids had a (thankfully small, modest) candy egg hunt, jumped on the trampoline, and otherwise amused themselves, and the grown-ups just enjoyed each other's company and talked about everything under the sun. The weather was beautiful too-- not too hot and sticky like it is some years. 

5.) Bedtime

We've swapped out our decade of the Rosary for the Divine Mercy Chaplet for the Octave. I thought it'd be nice to do the novena as a family. 

I don't know about nice, but it's definitely been penitential. 

Either the kids are both hitting a developmental milestone at the same time or we should have just NOT messed with evening routine. But it isn't going well at all. Lots of fidgeting (and some squabbling) during prayer, and lights out has been an ordeal pretty much every night, 

"I'm thirsty!" 

"MOM!! I NEED TO TALK TO YOU!!" 

"I'm NOT going to go to bed EVER AGAIN!!!" 

Sigh. I keep telling myself that it's just a phase, but dangit, it's a long phase. 

Well, I'm two takes short this week, but I don't think I can squeeze anymore out at the moment. I'll try to make it up to y'all next week. 

Take a look at the rest of this week's takes here.