Holy Week and Sacred Triduum: Saturday

This is what I had in my draft box before I brought my husband to the hospital emergency room with severe abdominal pain and swelling...

I love this day! As our seven year old said while bouncing up and down, "Mom, I can hardly wait until Easter! I think I'm going to bust!" Today is all about waiting and preparing.

We'll shop for last minute Easter basket items and fresh food needs for tomorrow. We'll make some dishes that we are bring to our friends' home for our traditional Easter ham dinner tomorrow. Can't forget to get all the Easter clothes ready! We will dye Easter eggs and finish up a few craft loose ends.

We will miss the Easter Vigil Mass tonight, which is a sacrifice. Our daughter will lecture at the family Mass tomorrow, with our whole family present. Tonight after the sun set, we will decorate the front of our home. We hang plastic eggs that have been tied to multi-colored ribbons from our trees. We also hang our Easter flag. Colored wicker Easter baskets with tacky multi-colored Easter grass line the front of the house. For the grand finale, add a purple 6' Easter Bunny similar to this one and you have a can't miss explosion of Easter joy!

(Disclaimer: If I had my way, our front yard would look more, umm, sophisticated. Last year when I was hugely pregnant, the family took the decorating of our "new to the desert front yard" bull by the horns and that explains the purple bunny! So now I eat humble pie, again, because the yard is perfectly eye-catching. It is especially noticeable since we are the only family in the near neighborhood who decorates for Easter.)...

There is nothing like a health scare, and this one was one of the scariest, to put things into perspective. However many wonderful activities we had planned, they didn't have to happen for the risen Christ to come in Easter glory. In fact, Easter is even more delicious exactly because Easter is NOT dependent upon me or you or health or anything human. Easter comes. He is risen!

Thanks be to God and to all my prayerful friends, my husband was home and in bed by 2:00 am on Easter morning. He received the best case scenario results and is on oral antibiotics for an infection. Praise God and Happy Easter!