May was a VERY big month for our family. I am sad that I don't have pictures of everything (mainly my awesome surprise 30th birthday party), but I'm sure you can just picture it in your minds.
Just to confuse our newly Orthodox minds, Makayla's 7th birthday was on Holy Saturday. We took the whole morning to celebrate Makayla, including her birthday doughnuts. She was showered with gifts and fun.
Then we spent the rest of the day preparing for Pascha! My first Pascha, and I'm asked to dye eggs red. Do you know how hard it is to get them RED! I tried hard, and nobody complained, they actually came out kinda cool looking and I was very thankful that there were many different shades of eggs. We partied ALL night at church, it was awesome. Our service doesn't even begin until 11:45pm and doesn't end for a good 2.5-3 hours later. Then the party starts! We have all packed food in baskets that we have been fasting from for the past couple of months and we chow down! It's a wonderful time of celebration. We didn't get home until 5 in the morning, thankfully all of the kids slept until around noon or later! Then we had a picnic and egg hunt at the park with our church family. It was the best Cinco de Mayo I have had.
And then of course is May 6th. The second best day of the year. Or at least is was to me! I turned 30 this year! Ya'll, I have been waiting for this day my whole life. Being the baby of the family, I never felt like I would grow up and be treated like an adult. Well, now, no one can say I'm not! Even though I have five kids, I still didn't feel like an "official" adult until I reached the big 3-0. To top it all off, my sweet husband threw me a "surprise" party. I had a blast! I know everyone had to have been exhausted from Pascha, so I was so honored that everyone came out to help me celebrate my special day!
I ran my first ever official 5K. It was a lot more intimidating than I thought it would be. There were serious runners everywhere! And then once we started it seemed like it was all up hill! I didn't finish in under 30 minutes (my goal), but I did get close and I ranked 10th out of 40 for my age group, which I was pretty impressed with for my first 5K.
There is a sign on this scale that says "Please weigh children before picking." Too cute to not snap a picture! And boy did we pick some Strawberries! Funny story. So we brought a little red wagon to help transport some kids through the fields. They also had wagons provided for your buckets. Josh counted out the amount of buckets he wanted us to fill and set them in a wagon, a mere 6. Well, apparently everyone thought that our wagon was THE bucket wagon and ended up putting leftover buckets in our wagon. So when I finished a bucket I would hand it to the girls and have them bring me an empty one. As long as there were buckets, I kept going. We did not pick 6 buckets full, we picked 12 buckets full! Needless so say we were a little bit surprised at the end of our picking. And we ate spaghetti the rest of the month to offset the cost of the berries on our food budget...
We did get 34 pints of jam canned for this year and about the same amount frozen for smoothies and flavoring things.
Our church school ended in May. To say thank you to the girls' teachers I like to make them something. Since they got jam last year, I thought I would do something different this year, so I made Rosemary wreaths. I thought they turned out pretty good for not having any idea what I was doing!
The finished product
Isn't my Abby just precious!
Oh the joys of free reign in the bedroom have begun. Sydney has finally learned how to climb in her sisters' beds and takes turns sleeping with each sister at night.
Although Pascha threw us off a bit, we did finally get around to celebrating Makayla's birthday. She decided she wanted to go bowling. (This really didn't happen until June, forgive me)
Another cookie cake for the birthday girl
And this pretty much sums up the life of Julianna right now. If there is dirt she is going to dig in it. She LOVES playing in the dirt. She was even sticking her head in it the other day.
3 comments:
I don't know how you did Pascha at midnight - with 5 kids! I am so thankful that we did a 7 am matins and liturgy - usually its at 6 am. Our Some friends of ours are Melkite and they do all the liturgical activities for at times that make my head spin. It rained on new calendar Pascha this year which was a bummer for the procession and it was a bit chilly too! Next year the stars will align and Pascha will be on the same day for new and old calendar!
I'm not sure if you have heard this and I am by no means telling you what to do with your family, but you guys should not celebrate your birthday, as Orthodox Christians. We are supposed to celebrate our Name Day, not our Birthday, as that is an act of self. Name Days are a great time to connect with the Saints, and can really be a great learning experience for the children.
Dear Anonymous, our Parish has the blessing of the Priest to celebrate both birthdays and namesdays.
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