The Philippine Homeschool Conference 2012 is a little over a month away! If you haven't already registered, do so now, and avail of the early bird discount (which is only available until Sunday, April 15!) Save P200 off your registration fee! :)
For details on how to register, please click here. If you want to support the conference by being a sponsor or exhibitor, please click here.
I've already registered through Ate Rita of CFA. :) (Hubby can't make it as he will be out of town to help lead a teambuilding activity). Hope to see you there!
A blessed, beautiful Easter to all of you! :) I hope the glorious joy and peace that comes with Easter is still very much evident in your hearts and homes — after all, Easter has just begun! (We're celebrating for 50 Days, how awesome is that!)
Anyway, I know I shared with you in a previous post how we planned to "do" the Easter Triduum and Easter Sunday, so I just want to share what we actually ended up doing.
On Holy (or Maundy) Thursday, we ended up attending the Mass of the Lord's Supper at Sacred Heart Parish, a church near my in-laws' place, instead of at our parish here in our village in Cainta. You see, hubby's grandmother, who is bedridden and ill, also celebrated her birthday on the same day, so we went to their place for her birthday celebration with family members on hubby's side.
We ended up staying longer than planned, even staying overnight (the kids were having so much fun playing with their cousins and bonding with family, they didn't want to leave anymore). So we weren't able to do our own washing of the feet ceremony as a family and also skipped the online Visita Iglesia. We did try to teach the kids about the symbolism behind Jesus' washing the disciples' feet (love and servanthood) and also watched these videos with them:
For Good Friday (God's Friday!), we went back to our apartment in the morning and attended the Good Friday/Veneration of the Cross service in our parish. The kids were kind of tired when we got home, so we didn't do any crafts but just enjoyed spending time together. I'm grateful that Tim was mindful of the fact that we were fasting/abstaining on that day, and he contributed in his own way by "fasting" from the educational computer games which he loves to play.
Holy Saturday was spent cleaning up our apartment in preparation for our Catholic group's prayer meeting on Holy Monday. It was "summer cleaning," for us, since we don't really experience spring here. :) I also prepared the eggs and stuff for the kids' Easter Treasure Hunt, a modified version of the traditional Easter Egg Hunt. :) We didn't get to go to the Easter Vigil though. Hopefully next year.
Easter Sunday saw us attending morning Mass at our parish and going to my dad’s for lunch. We were joined by my youngest brother and a few Youth for Christ (YFC) leaders and missionaries from Timor Leste, who are here for the YFC International Leaders Conference this weekend. It was great to catch up with them and speak in Tetun again! (We used to be based in Timor as missionaries).
The kids had a blast hunting for goodies on their Easter Treasure Hunt and eating the Easter cake their Tito Jay brought for them.
All in all, it was a truly blessed Easter for our family. I only hope and pray that the seeds of love and life in Jesus will continue to be sown in our kids’ hearts, as well as our own, throughout this Easter season and beyond, and eventually, bear good fruit. In the future.
Enjoy the rest of Easter, everyone!
P.S. Sharing some of our pics with you. :)
I forgot to include this pic in my last post. :) These love notes from Jesus were the last Easter "treasures" in the kids' treasure hunt on Easter Sunday.
Hubby, me, my dad and our Timorese brothers and sister
Alleluia! :) Kids with their Tito (Uncle) Jay
Ready for our Easter Treasure Hunt! :)
Treasure under Lolo's pillow
Where to next?! :)
Treasure under their cousins' pillow (The cousins were not present, though..)
More treasures! :)
Our Easter cake. C/o my brother. :) Store-bought from Red Ribbon, hehe!
Didn't have the time to make a genuine Resurrection cake, but I hope we could do it next year! (If we have an oven by then! LOL!)
Of course, we had to have a candle-blowing ceremony! :)
The kids enjoyed playing checkers with their Tito Jay back in our humble home. :)
Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?"
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
(1 Corinthians 15: 55-57)
Although our Lenten and Holy Week plans and promises did not all go according to what we had hoped, we are nonetheless grateful for how God has brought us to this wonderful day — Easter, when we celebrate Jesus' rising from the dead! :) Thank God we have 50 days to celebrate this beautiful, blessed occasion!
Here's a peek at what the kids will be getting today at our "Easter Treasure Hunt," which we will have during our planned Easter party later at Lolo Mon's house. We'll be having lunch with my dad, my youngest brother and our young "family" members from Timor Leste, who are here for the Youth for Christ International Leaders Conference next weekend:
I reused the plastic Easter eggs we bought last year for our Resurrection Eggs set and placed different "goodies" in each egg — the pink and purple ones are for Rysse and the green and blue ones for Tim. I also bought some Catholic items at our local St. Paul's store.
Can you guess what are inside these eggs? LOL! I think the sticks pretty much give it away! (Lollipops! Tee hee!)
I bought these little books about stories from the Bible (OK, they're kind of NOT related to Easter, but we don't have that many choices here in the Philippines!). Then, I taped Easter eggs to the covers of the books, with each egg containing a one-peso coin. :)
These eggs contain small glow-in-the-dark statues of the Sto. Nino (for Tim) and of Mama Mary (for Rysse).
The last and greatest "treasure" in our hunt will be these VCDs of Saints Stories with holy picture cards of the Resurrected Christ, the Holy Family and St. Therese (for Rysse) and St. Michael (for Tim, they didn't have a St. Timothy card at St. Paul's). The Easter eggs contain a jelly candy each.
I taped the eggs to the kids' favorite snack foods - choc chip cookies for Tim and cheese crackers for Rysse. The eggs contain, again, one-peso coins. :)
Last-minute additions :) I tried to make a cross out of lollipops, after reading this post about symbolic Easter baskets for Catholic children. How I wish we had Catholic stores that sold Catholic-themed candies and goodies like those featured here! :)
It's not too late to have a Christ-centered Easter activity for your families, friends! :) Here are some useful links:
P.S. This Easter Sunday, the kids are going on a treasure hunt and we'll be having a simple party. But our only prayer is that they discover the greatest treasure of all, i.e. the Resurrected Christ, alive forevermore! Alleluia! :)
