Happy Birthday to my baby!

Well, I tried to get back on and post yesterday afternoon, but blogger was acting up. At any rate, my baby successfully turned THREE years old yesterday. I am a little melancholy about it, actually - at the idea of not having a baby or toddler anymore. But not melancholy enough to have another one. Heh.

Here's my sweetie ready to go off to school after opening presents yesterday. Really, it seems like Maura just sprouted overnight into a full-fledged child with a full-grown sense of what she wants to go with it (I'd forgotten how independent 3-year-olds become).

Happy birthday, baby!

In other news, we had a very busy and exhausting weekend. On Saturday we went to the annual teaching liturgy that our priest does. This is always a really enlightening service. It's neat to see the things and hear the prayers we normally don't get to see because the clergy do them away from the people. It's also nice to be able to ask questions about different things. The kids were full of energy, but seemed to enjoy it, as well. Then it turned out that there were a lot of things that needed to be fixed up to prepare the church for Palm Sunday and so it ended up being a full work-day. It was tiring, but we got to hang out with friends and visit some, too, which was nice. Then Sunday, of course, was Palm Sunday. This year the Eastern calendar for Pascha coincides with the Western calendar for Easter. Palm Sunday is a HUGE event in Arab lands. I've been told that on Palm Sunday even muslims go to church in Arab countries. So it is the biggest day of the year, attendance-wise, for our parish. And this year was no different. With beautiful weather, everyone came out of the woodwork for the liturgy. Since it was so crazy I didn't even try to bring a cake for coffee hour to celebrate Maura's birthday. And it turned out that was good because 4 other people were celebrating their birthdays, too! There was plenty of cake and celebrating to go around. Here's some photos of the girls on Palm Sunday:

So this week is Holy Week - we have lots of services to attend (the Deac more so than the kids and I) and traditional foods to prepare for Pascha! There is a traditional Russian dish called Kulich (a sweet bread) and Cheese Pascha (a sweet cheese spread for the kulich) that I make every year. A few years ago I figured out how to make the kulich in the bread machine and that is great (though not traditional!). This year, the Deac wants me to figure out how to make the cheese pascha with Splenda or something to make it low-carb. We might be asking for the moon, but I'm willing to give it a try.

In other news, Emmelia lost her second tooth yesterday! It's been loose for a while and when I got to daycare yesterday she had me feel it and I was able to just pull it out easily. So the tooth fairy left her one of the new President-series dollar coins and, at Emmelia's request, left her tooth there under her pillow as well. She apparently wants to save them. So I need to get her a nice treasure box of some sort to store her teeth in - they make such things, but maybe we'll make one.