Palm Sunday Eggs

Palm Sunday is here, and yes, it's a little earlier this year.  Okay, a lot earlier.  Speaking of lots, it's also Purim this weekend too, so there's a lot going on!  Anyway, you can see above that Maddie and some of the others in our cast are out greeting the kids, all of them waving their palms.  

That's a tradition I've talked about here before, but when I was raised in a Catholic church, we always got these palms on Palm Sunday, and so I sort of transferred that here, and so each Palm Sunday all the kids walk away with a reminder of what today is - Palm Sunday. I also have the "how to fold a palm cross" sheet we print out and handout to everyone.

Maddie makes those for everyone each year because she's so good at it.  She folks these crosses, and in fact Mom has a few leftover from last year that she uses in a display at home.

It was a solid morning at church - we were still in the book of Exodus, talking about complaining Israelites - the message title was based on an old Keith Green song, "So You Want to Go Back to Egypt?"  We had a meeting after church too, a big one with all the volunteers that included a lot of drill information pertaining to evacuations, lock-downs, severe weather drills and so on.  One benefit of that was the free lunch!  

We got home and Mom is just in turbo mode now, modifying costumes, sewing costumes, adjusting costumes, and doing her best with creating new costumes, this still with just one week to go until Easter.  She took a break tonight though, because it is Purim today - we sat down to watch the Veggie Tales "Esther."  Which sounds like Easter, but it's not.  Anyway, this version is just nostalgic fun!  Obviously it's for younger audiences, but we just love it.  Mom and I were calling out "BOOO!" each time Haman's name was brought up.  But yeah, it was good.

I did my walking in the Serengeti, which has been a super fun series on the treadmill, absolutely interesting.  Also fun, I've been mixing that with some running in Colorado.  And also, Maddie and I were working a little on Mom's Easter Basket some.  That'll hopefully turn out fun!  I guess you'll find out in a week...

Next, we remembered all the practices this week and realized that tonight was going to be the only time we could color our Easter eggs. We knew this would be a busy season, so we got this little device ahead of time, an "egg spinner."

It's called "Egg Mazing."  With this device, we didn't have to worry tonight about cups, colored liquid dyes, or any mess.  We just got the eggs ready, cooking them up and coloring them off and drying them, and then setting them in device.  And then as the eggs spin, you rest a marker on them, creating a kind of spin art.

We all agreed it was a fun way of doing things, and again a lot easier.  Just something different!

Here's Mom starting on hers.  We all just felt it was highly therapeutic, a sort of relaxing vibe as you watch the colors fill up the egg with minimal effort.  

And the end results were quite satisfying too.  I'm not saying we'll do this every single year, but during this season we tend to get super busy with costumes and everything else, and this was just a quick and easy way of honoring a tradition that we haven't missed each year.  We've been doing this with Maddie since the beginning, and it's always been fun.  Here's the end products!

Maddie's first egg at the top, followed by the rainbow one I did.

Maddie works on a sunrise, a tradition for her with the eggs.

Here's the egg-shaped device, and one of Maddie's best eggs.

We like the squiggle ones a lot!

Like this one, for example.  Pretty cool!

We popped in a movie while we were doing the eggs - this egg is actually based on the movie we were watching, "Elemental."  You can see the fire in the middle there, and the water on either side.  The movie was good, by the way.  We enjoyed it!

This one is Mom's first egg, which turned out rather nicely!

One of Maddie's last eggs.  It's like a Rothko painting.  
"But there was this one Rothko that was sublime, bro!" - Luis

Maddie does one of these each year, the sunrise and the silhouetted crosses - an Easter tradition.

And here they are in our yearly traditional Easter egg portrait!

They came out well!  And it was fun doing them too.  Just something different this year, and creative as well.

After that, definitely time for bed.  All kinds of astronomy tonight too - there was a severe geomagnetic storm, and on top of that a partial lunar eclipse tonight.  Lots of talk about the solar eclipse upcoming for a big part of the country, but tonight's events were not really seen because of the overcast skies, plus the lunar eclipse didn't start until late, late, late. That's okay.  But the geomagnetic storm... wow.  Isn't it great we have this shield around the earth to block such attacks from the sun?  Wonder how that got there, and how convenient it is for us here on earth.  It does sound like there's potential for all kinds of chaos with the strength of these things, particularly concerning our massive dependence on electronics these days.  

Tonight before bed, we read from our Star Wars book again, and it's been fun.  Tonight's short story was about the sand people who attacked Luke in the first movie, and their first time knowing fear as they met that desert wizard named Ben.  We said our prayers, and then the Plush Entourage marched right down the hall where everyone was tucked in for a good night's rest.