Holy Saturday

So, although this is rather out-of-order, I can't leave out all the fun goings-on that happened Holy Saturday!

On my part, there was a whole load of humility baking.

That's what happens when you set out to make this:

But it turns out like this:

Pat: "Is that supposed to be an egg?"

Me:

Pat: "Well, I guess it's the taste that really counts!"

And while I was making that (and a bunch of other things), Pat was busy building giant 250 lbs rabbit cage-tank numero dos.

He was like a bulldog, worked on it quickly and all. day. long. Mac came over and helped, and thanks to the help, Pat finished it right at dusk, including the final coat of paint on the outside!

Pat told me he used over 15 normal screws, 100 deck screws, 150 nails, and 1500 staples. So, needless to say, Pat got an intense arm-workout all day long. Not to mention all the hand-sawing that he did!

We have to report that Wyatt was very happy to be in his new cage.

And, on the subject of rabbits, we also had *some* new additions to the family!

The baby bunnies arrived today (as in Holy Saturday!), just in time for Easter!

Can you see them in there?

Yeah, neither can I. But I can tell they are there as they move around under all that fur. And because of where the mama-bunny (Parsnip) put her nest, it is completely inaccessible for us, and so we won't know how many babies there are OR what they look like until they come out of the nest or at least climb on top of the fur!

Very very clever.

Although being right next to the chicken wire, it's a good thing she didn't have these babies back in February or March with all the cold, snow and sleet.

So maybe she is very very stupid?

Oh well, the jury is still out. But I can't wait to see what they look like!

She is a very protective mama, and always watches closely when anyone approaches. So it will be interesting to see how she behaves as the babies grow up.

While I was running some errands in the afternoon, Kateri went with Nanny and visited her great Aunt Gigi and great Uncle Dick. She had so much fun! In the pictures I saw, it looked like she was carefully hoarding all the toys to herself!

Afterwards, she went with Nanny and Mac back to their home for some very special baking!

An Easter Cake!

Kateri worked very hard to decorate it.

And had so much fun!

Especially when she and Mac tested the icing to make sure there was no poison:

(Let's be serious. Best part of baking!)

Kateri was very proud of her cake!

And how she decorated the top:

Thanks to Nanny and Mac for such a fun afternoon and Easter craft~ she loved it!

The Easter bunny came right on by on Holy Saturday, and our decorations (most of which are courtesy of the store) were all set out! So here are a few:

 

Ready for Easter!

He is Risen!

He is Risen, Indeed!


After a very beautiful (and very long. . . thanks mainly to Kateri's wild and loud shenanigans) Easter Mass at Old St Mary's, we did get two family photos, thanks to Nanny.

Although Kateri would not be parted from her apple juice,

And her sweater appears much bigger then I perceived it to be in my mind . . .  at least she did look at the camera!

Haha. Oh well.


And after a quick change at home, and a quick rush to fix the food, we headed out to Crockett Park to meet the fam.

It was perfect weather!

Mom set up the table so beautifully and there was so much delicious food.

Everyone had fun~

Especially the littles!

Laura and Mikey brought some eggs for Kateri and Charlotte.

Kateri was content to stop after finding a couple eggs.

but got even more excited when aunt Jeanne found a third egg for her!!

Peter and Char blew some bubbles

Don't EAT the bubble!!!

While the guys threw  around the football and baseball, K-bear and Charlotte got to do one of their all time favorite things and SWING!

It was glorious!

They also crawled all over the big grassy field.

 

I was interested to see how far Kateri would crawl on her own.

Well, she kept going and going . . .

and she did stop to look back once,

(can you see her under that tree?)

but after that she was all systems go, no looking back!

I better watch out when I get distracted by her little brother in a few weeks!

One of Kateri's favorite parts of the day was riding in the Hilleary's wagon.

Even after we got to the dock, she wanted to keep riding in the wagon, and would climb in over and over again!

 

 

 



 And even when it wasn't going anywhere, she didn't mind just sitting there . . .

Mikey did some fishing

And Charlotte was a good fisherman, too!

Although no fish were biting.

Even Wrigley had fun (despite being hit at one point by a runaway soccer ball)

 

It was a lovely afternoon!! Thanks be to God!

Holy Thursday: In which we celebrate a Passover Meal

After a long hiatus, I am finally getting back to my poor neglected blog! So much to write about . . . but rather then going in any sort of chronological order, I think I will just begin with yesterday.

Yesterday we celebrated a modified Seder meal! Sometime last week, we decided that we would commemorate the Last Supper by celebrating the Passover Meal. Pat has been to a Seder meal in the past, but I have never been to one so I had A LOT of researching to do.

There is so much information out there and so many good ideas! But mostly, I was struck by the symbolism behind each and every food, and how perfectly the Passover prefigures the Passion.

After a lot of researching, we decided to go with the script from this page. It is beautiful because it has the richness of the Jewish traditions, and also incorporates elements of the Last Supper and the Institution of the Eucharist.  After a few small changes, we put the script in Word, and Pat even added some artistic touches:

(See the Last Supper picture in the background?! Very impressive. I never think of those things!)

I was a little worried it would last too long since it is about ten pages (!!), but it didn't end up feeling like it was interminable (probably because Kateri was content to drink her grape juice (most of) the time!

Each of us had a menu~

which outlined the Ritual Seder Meal Menu, AND the Actual Meal Menu.

That way we were all assured in writing that there WOULD be plenty of food for dinner! Ha! Even though I was the one making the meal, it was still comforting to me to know that there was plenty of food and it wasn't just horseradish!

So, probably anyone and everyone is already familiar with the traditional foods, but a lot of them were new for me, SO  here they are, but please feel free to SKIP!

Ritual Seder Meal Menu:
Matzoh: unleavened bread. WHY is it so important that it's unleavened? It reminds us of the great haste with which the Israelites fled Egypt, leaving no time for the dough to rise. And, only unleavened bread is used at Mass (unless you happen to go to Mass in the middle-of-nowhere CO like we did one time, and the little old lady after Mass regaled us with her recipe for the hosts {which did seem leavened) which included honey and other things . . . yep, never went there again!)

Maror: bitter herbs (horseradish or romaine lettuce roots) symbolizing the bitterness of slavery (I have ALWAYS wondered what bitter herbs were, and always imagined a mix of rosemary, thyme etc, but boy does horseradish do the trick, bitter and bleh! although Stephen did suggest wasabi would be a good alternative. Not sure if that is quite kosher, however!)

Charoset: mixture of apples, nuts, cinnamon, honey, sugar and wine symbolizing the mortar used by the Jews in constructing buildings for the Egyptians. (I thought this tasted delish, but made WAY too much!)

Beitzah: roasted (hard boiled) egg symbolizing the temple sacrifice and continuing cycle of life

Zeroah: roasted lamb symbolizing the ancient Passover sacrifice and prefiguring the Lamb of God

Salt Water: to dip the Beitzah and Karpas, symbolizing the slaves tears

So, since there were four of us (plus two babes-in-arms), we put all the ceremonial food on the green platter in the middle of the table.

And the salt water in the white custard dish.

Did you know that traditionally four glasses of wine are drunk during this ceremony? And we can pinpoint when Our Lord instituted the Eucharist~ which glass it was? I found this so beautiful and fascinating. Each glass of wine (drunk at different times) recalls the four terms which describe God's actions in the Exodus~ "I brought out",  "I saved", "I delivered", "I redeemed". And it is with the fourth cup, the cup of redemption, that the Eucharist was instituted! The night before Our Lord was crucified and redeemed us! Mind blown. Seriously.

Anyway, once we completed the Seder, we went on to our actual meal. I have never made lamb before, so I was definitely a little worried how it would turn out. I ended up using Ina Garten's herb roasted lamb recipe, which was nice and simple, and included potatoes.

Here it is before it started cooking:

Ha, not the most appetizing thing I've ever seen!

We also had melon salad, deviled eggs, and green salad and cake + whipped cream + strawberries for dessert. Kateri gave the strawberries an A+.

All in all, it took me about 7 times longer than it should have to get everything set up (I am really trying to work on my cooking speed, but I am just. not. that. fast.) BUT it was so much fun and totally worth it! Hopefully, I will be able to do this again (maybe yearly?!), but we will see . . . something tells me once there is more then one kiddo it will be much much harder!

FAS (Frustrating, Awesome, Saturdays)

For the last few Saturdays I have been working on several home projects.  The first and biggest is building new rabbit cages.  This needed to be done asap because the current $100 piece of crap cages are falling apart after 3 years, thanks Petco.  Three of the rabbits got out and were corralled by Wrigley (the dog not the field in Chicago).  Two of the rabbits were female and the other was a very “friendly” Wyatt.  I am not sure if he showed off his moves he learned from Doc Holiday but one can only imagine, wait don’t, that’s gross.  Anyways, if Wyatt’s two lady friends are expecting we need to get them a decent home.  This maybe Manassas Park but we treat pregnant ladies properly.  I started my journey of making an awesome rabbit cage weeks ago and received great help from my brother and dad.  I wanted a nice cage that would last and thought it would take a day or two.  Well, it turned into a rabbit cage bomb shelter; my rabbits are watching you, Putin.  This thing is a tank and took wayyyyyyyyy longer than a few days to make.  The two female escapeeeees are now in their very nice prison.  It even has roofing; it’s mostly awesome.

Here it is!

Our dishwasher was clogged so being the awesome Mario Brothers plumber that I am, we hand washed dishes for a week but since we do not live in colonial times I decided this needs to get fixed!  I went online to get some ideas.  I poured baking soda and vinegar down the drain.  Not only did this work but I felt like I was working on a high school science fair project except I was actually really doing it and not just making up a report.  It was awesome!!!  Dishwasher volcano!!!

We are also redoing the hallway bathroom.  The main part of this wonderfully fun job is painting the cabinets.  Thanks to Tee they look great!  They look like some high society, country club, Falcon’s Landing, style cabinets; now we just need some sweet fake plants with convincing fake water.  I was putting some final touch-up paint on the side and, when taking the satanic painters tape off, I noticed it took some of the new paint with it.  I gave up cussing after we had Kateri so think of what you would say if you were to stub your toe getting out of the shower in the morning and insert that word.

Due to a tighter budget in preparation of baby G number two, I was not going to get the baseball package on cable this year.  As you all know I love being letdown which is why I am a Cubs fan.  I received an email asking if I wanted to get the package again so I just left it alone but what I did not realize is that it’s an automatic renewal and did not notice this until it was on our bill.  I know this sounds like a total lie and I would not blame you for thinking that; if I was a good liar I might try to swing that but I am terrible at it.  Because it was an “automatic” renewal we did get a discount and Tee is graciously letting me keep it! I knew I married that girl for a reason!  I have stayed up late multiple nights watching our bullpen blow leads and our offense score 3 runs however our young guys have got us a few nice wins!  On that note I would like to send Wrigley Field a belated happy birthday!  I do not know where I would be without you.

 

Here is a picture from my first and only time at Wrigley Field!

 

 

Stirfry . . . a little of everything

First things first, Happy Birthday to my amazing dad! I unfortunately didn't get many (or any, really) pictures, but we had a great evening celebrating his birthday! Delicious dinner (main course, chicken pot pie~ made by Lu).  Mimi and Johnny got an ice cream cake from Coldstone~ YUM! And it was extra fun because everyone was able to make it, a tricky thing these days.

Here is Kateri waiting for the chicken pot pie:

Which she loved!

So we had a great Monday celebration for Dad! :)

In other mundane news, the bread turned out like this:

Clearly I need to work on my braiding skills. BUT otherwise the loaves turned out fine!

And I made a tuna sandwich the next day,

which did taste better then it looks, I promise! And there was none of that over-risen yeasty flavor I was worried about. Sweet! So, on Saturday, we went to Costco and bought a huge thing of honey for future bread. Now I have no choice other than to use it!

And, on an entirely different topic, a couple weeks ago I took some pictures for Mimi. It goes without saying, Mimi is a bombshell! And, aside from some hilarious pictures like this:

 Buddy co-operated and smiled for the camera.