The Paschal greeting, also known as the Easter acclamation, is an Easter custom among Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Eastern Catholic Christians, as well as among some Roman Catholic and Protestant Christians. Instead of "hello" or its equivalent, one is to greet another person with "Christ is Risen!", and the response is "He is Risen Indeed" (compare Matthew 27:64, Matthew 28:6–7, Mark 16:6, Luke 24:6, Luke 24:34).

from Wikipedia (so you know you're getting the best possible information)

How I Came to Love the Crunchy Simple Life (with a side of Mennonites)
1. What did you and your family wear to Mass on Easter Sunday?


If this is of interest to you, please check back at around 2pm Pacific, as I plan to update this post with family Easter dress photos after we all get back from Mass.

Until then I will subject you to some grainy iPhone photos of last night's third-grade-and-up + one-year-and-down Vigil brigade.

Here's the gang:



And more importantly, here's my friend Tami holding baby Lulu's BFF baby Phoebe as Tami was received into full communion with the Catholic Church. This made me so, so, so happy.


Congratulations to Tami and to the rest of you awesome folks who were received into the Church at the Vigil this year. Welcome, welcome, welcome.

PLEASE say hi in the comments so we can all give you some love!

Update! Here we are in our Easter

finery . . .

the cousins

with my parents, my sister, and her family

2. Easter Bunny: thumbs up or thumbs down?

Thumbs up here.

Not way, way up like for Santa, and leprechauns.

Mostly because, jeesh, how creepy are Easter Bunnies?

via Huffington Post

But I stand firmly behind magical holidays and fairy tale childhoods, so the bunny it is.

Although I'm not all that good at it. The husband had to intercept a rabbit's foot key-chain I had picked up for Gus, since he's a big fan of all things soft, and suggest that to put a rabbit's foot in an Easter basket from the Easter Bunny would fall somewhere between inappropriate and insane on the old Easter-Basket-Continuum.

So don't listen to me. Listen to my friend E at Teaching Sam + Scout instead:

Jesus + Bunnies

All those things? The pastel colors, the painted eggs, the “baby bunnies”? We will have them, and we will enjoy them; but, we will also talk about how they are only symbols of the NEWNESS and LIFE that Jesus’s death and resurrection bring to our everyday. They will be packed up and sent to live in the basement on Monday, but the new start and full life that we get from Jesus at Easter is FOREVER. Before the cross, we were lifeless and doomed. After it, we start FRESH with the hope of life eternal. THAT is worth celebrating. Heck, that is worth wearing our finest clothes and cooking a ham and eating a few too many jellybeans. Am I right? So… Our Easter includes bunnies and eggs, but it is about Jesus.

3. Do you prefer to celebrate holidays at your own house or at someone else's house?


I like both, but I prefer to have them at our house. Especially since my mom almost always comes up and does all the cooking so . . . best-of-both-worlds much?

We spent the first five or six years of kid-dom taking turns going back and forth between the different grandparents' houses for holidays. Which was lovely.

Easter 2005 in Chicago. That baby that looks exactly like Lulu is Betty.

My mother and mother-in-law are both generous hostesses and excellent holiday cooks, but there came a time when I really began to long for our own family holiday traditions.

Easter 2006 in San Diego. New and improved, now with baby Bobby.

I wanted my kids to have memories of spending holidays at our house.

So, for the most part, we now have major holidays here, with an open invitation to any and all family members to join us.

4. What is your favorite kind of candy?

I have a huge sweet tooth. I really, really like candy. I may have a pack-a-day Reese's peanut butter cups habit when I'm pregnant.

But even better than regular Reese's peanut butter cups are holiday Reese's peanut butter stuff.




The peanut butter to chocolate ratio is improved in the eggs and trees that you can only get for the holidays. Improved, I say.

5. Do you like video games?

I do not. I don't really GET video games. I like to have something to show for my time spent, and video games don't really have anything to offer in that department.

My kids DO like them.

I also don't get that.

But, so far, they can stay. I wrote more about it here:

WHY WE WII

6. Do you speak another language?


Here's where I would love to go super-geek and be able to tell you that I speak elvish, or Klingon, or even Latin.

But alas, all I speak is I-was-raised-in-Southern-California-so-I-kinda-picked-it-up Español.

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For next week I'm tagging:

Elise at In Endless Song. Post to check out =
Will you join her in a novena to St. Gianna Molla? {p,h,f,r}, holy week & an invitation

Annery at Annery at Home. Post to check out =
The Dirt {TT} Why I've Been Quiet