C: Consciousness, Stream of #AtoZBlogging

Good morning and Happy Monday. I hope you had a wonderful weekend and are ready to get back to work! My weekend was a bit crazy. I got the kids back from my parents and they were very excited to be home. We had church on Sunday and then a football game of Ken's. We were able to watch a movie, take a nap, and even go for a walk after dinner. It was a nice family day together.

I had a few other plans for this post that ended up not working in my head. To be completely honest and up front about it, I had wanted to post about crafting since that's something I enjoy. However, I realized I hadn't had the chance to share about Easter and since I have other plans for E on Wednesday, I thought I'd sneak it in now.

My mom was born and raised Catholic. Her faith has always been important to her and it's something she passed along to me. My faith has meant different things to me at different times in my life, but the one steady is that it's always been there.

I didn't set out to marry a Catholic boy on purpose. In fact, I didn't really think of it as an option in the small town I grew up in. My religious education classes had between 4 and 6 students by the time I reached high school, and half of those were female!

Ken and I met doing youth ministry together. We didn't actually start dating until after I had graduated from high school, so that gave us lots of time to get to know each other. Plus we had a great group of friends in common who supported us.

We got married in the church and have brought our kids up in the faith. I'm not saying that makes it easy, but it has made it doable. We have this commonality deep in our cores and it helps us to build a stronger family. We've gone through changes in jobs, new life, death, moving, etc. and had something to cling to throughout it all.

Christmas and Easter are two of my favorite times in the church calendar. Christmas because it brings Jesus into our lives and Easter because Jesus gives meaning to our lives. This year for Lent the kids and I made it to the Stations of the Cross at church every Friday. They complained at first, but by the second week they were looking forward to it and by the third week they were volunteering to do readings.

We celebrated the Triduum together as well. Ken managed to get his schedule so that he could come to Holy Thursday Mass and Good Friday Liturgy with us. The kids asked some great questions this year, which lets me know they are really starting to understand and internalize their own faith.

Easter Sunday we woke up early for Mass and then drove down to Natural Bridge for our big Easter meal. My parents were there, as well as both of my brothers, my sister-in-law, Ken's dad and his fiancee, her grandson, and a couple of friends my parents had met in Iran about 45 years ago. It was a big crowd, but such a great time to spend together!

After our lunch, Ken and I left the kids with my parents for their Spring Break and headed home to enjoy some time together, just the two of us. Truthfully, though, all we really did was sit around and watch TV together most of the time. But we watched it with the volume as loud as we wanted it!