Last week, I went to a local park with my Cupcakes and while I was strolling the baby, they rode their bikes through a trail to get to the park.  I spotted a black racer snake on the side of the trail and my son informed me that they are harmless.  My son then went to investigate and caught what looks like a snake, but is a legless lizard.  He knew right away that it was an Eastern Glass Legless Lizard. Here are a few pictures I took with my phone:

Today is one of those days that our home, our domestic church, and our universal Church will remember like the day that Pope Francis was chosen.

This day is historic in so many faith-filled ways and I wanted our family to celebrate it and remember it. 

Today is an historic day of 4 Popes. As stated in the link, "Never before have a reigning pope and a retired pope celebrated Mass together in public."

Today we celebrate the canonization of two Popes.  Jessica over at Shower of Roses has a great list of 7 ways to commemorate this joyous day with children.

HERE is a link to miraculous stories by two women who were healed through the intercession of these two popes.   Fascinating for sure!

Today is also Divine Mercy Sunday.  Find out more about Divine Mercy devotion HERE.  In this list of 21 Awesome Fact You Didn't Know about JP2, on fact #7 it tells the connection between JP2 and Sister Faustina and the devotion to the Divine Mercy image.
We also had some fruit from our "Divine Mercy fruit platter" filled with raspberries, strawberries, and blueberries.

And for dessert we colored Divine Mercy images that I printed out on card stock and put on top of our Divine Mercy "Sundaes".  Thank you Lacy at Catholic Icing for this fun and festive idea!


After our dessert, my husband led our family in The Chaplet of The Divine Mercy.

It has been a blessed day filled with a deeper love and understanding of Christ's universal Church and Jesus' infinite love and mercy!

After a beautiful Easter Mass, there was a big Easter egg hunt for the little and big kids outside of the church.  It was misty rain and cold, but that didn't stop the fun.  Our son found the "golden egg" for the older kids that had a nice green bill inside.  He was excited to find the big prize! 

Then we headed to my parents' home for more Easter fun!  My two older kids hid the eggs for my 9 and 6 year old girls and my parents put coins in the eggs instead of candy.  My girls had to count up the change and find the total.  A little Easter math never hurt anyone :)

My kids enjoyed this cute Apple Bunny craft that my Mom found somewhere on the internet.  Using toothpicks, the ears are jelly orange candy, the eyes and nose are jelly beans, and the whiskers are string cheese.  The tail is a white marshmallow.  My kids had fun using their creativity!

What a blessed and busy Holy Week we have had so far!  We have started some new Holy Week traditions this year thanks to so many talented and creative bloggers!  To see what we have been up to this Holy Week check out these previous posts:
  
Holy Week Happenings: Sunday/Monday: Pickle Ball {post 1 of 3}

 Holy Week Happenings: Tuesday: Water Color Crucifix & Growing Easter Grass {post 2 of 3}

Holy Week Happenings: Wednesday: Spy Wednesday and Via Cruces {post 3 of 3} 

This morning we went to watch my Mom play Table Tennis for the Senior Games.  It was great to watch her play Pickle Ball this past Monday and today we got to see her do some awesome Table Tennis games!



After Table Tennis we then came home and had our special Good Friday lunch.  Lacy over at Catholic Icing recently posted about how she created a Story of the Passion Lunch-Symbolic Lunch for Good Friday.  Gosh, she amazes me (too) and I am so grateful for all she does to share our beautiful and awesome Catholic faith in fun and creative ways for our families!

So I thought we would have our own symbolic lunch for Good Friday using Lacy's post as our guide and it was extra special because my husband was able to come home from work to join us.

Here are pictures from our lunch today:

 

 
Now we are off to Good Friday service, the only day of the entire year where Mass is not celebrated anywhere in the world!   More on that HERE!

Holy Week Happenings: Sunday/Monday: Pickle Ball {post 1 of 3} HERE
Holy Week Happenings: Tuesday: Water Color Crucifix & Growing Easter Grass {post 2 of 3} HERE

I laid out my "plans" for Holy Week in a prior post HERE and on Wednesday we did a new Holy Week tradition that I saw on Kendra's post called "Spy Wednesday."

I read Matthew 26:1-16 to my children where Judas betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver.  I used thirty dimes and hid them in 2 rooms in my house.  It was interesting to observe my children grab the coins and my older children were pushing each other out of the way for them (such angels :) )  My 6 year old was in tears because all her older siblings were grabbing faster than she could find.  Eventually, my children combined their coins into one pile as we discussed how easy it is to be greedy and selfish like Judas.

Wednesday morning we went to pray the Stations of the Cross with another homeschool family at "Via Cruces" (Way of the Cross), a meditation garden that was beautifully created by a couple in our parish in their yard. The couple made the garden for anyone to meditate on Jesus' passion, death and resurrection with the Stations of the Cross.  It was an amazing place filled with treasures and gems along the path and I decided to visit it again often, especially during Holy Week.  Here are some pictures from our visit: