pascha

The service began at 11:30pm in only candle light. At about 2:00am the service ended and we broke the lenten fast. This year we were on our way home a little after 4:00am. Different families have different tactics. We put our kids to bed and woke them up for the service, Anna slept until the party and Joachim was up for all but 30 minutes of the service. There is so much joy and anticipation that everyone does very well young to old.
Here Joachim is standing with Grandma who is directing the choir.
and here his waits his turn to receive communion.
Sunday we all got together for a church picnic and Easter egg hunting. Since Anna slept in her car seat the whole night I dressed her up for the picnic.
Below is the icon of the resurrection. Ben's sister painted this one. Her icons are the nicest of any contemporary ones I've ever seen. She painted all of the ones on the iconostasis in the picture at the beginning of the post. They depict different feast days like the nativity of Christ, Theophony, Tranfiguration and so on. This church is very blessed to have so many handpainted icons. She's often working on one when I take Joachim over to play with Katia. It's not just painting with acrylic or oils. She uses gesso, egg yolks and tempera paints, gold leaf, and I don't know what else.
This is the 5 and under egg hunt. In the subsequent video you see them all make a dash for the field, fortunately the older kids "hid" dozens of eggs and there were PLENTY for everyone.