My Favorite Holiday.

Ever since I went to Catherine Pakaluk's talk at the Edith Stein Conference this February, I've been on a mission to give Easter a chance. I was going to make it the biggest holiday of the year. I even sprung for a Tonka fire truck and a xylophone for Ryan at the thrift store for his first ever Easter basket. Christmas has, of course, always been my favorite holiday. I mean ... my grandma's tradition-packed celebration with at least 50+ people guaranteed annually makes it hard for any day of the year to top. And now that I've married that man of mine? Christmases with the Harringtons aren't exactly horrible and boring. They are quite the opposite. No matter where we are, Christmas is full of family and food and just everything needed to make it the king of favorite-holiday-land.

It was a good weekend, in general, even with my whole, "You take him!" child pass to Chris outside church after some restless-toddler-hitting-his-mom-like-teenage-girls-fighting-at-the-Passion antics. My friend, Meagan, was visiting and doing wedding planning stuff (weddings, weddings, weddings!). My parents and sister were in town. The weather was heavenly. I had to be at the Basilica on Saturday afternoon, and little things kept popping smiles on my face. Having to introduce myself as Katrina Harrington with the surname still calling for a pinch me! Hearing a lady mention, "Well, I've spent my life reading children's books." Seeing a young boy kneel down next to his mom in the pew after Confession and smiling that squeaky-clean-soul smile and her genuinely happy, gentle, proud and kind of giddy smile in return. You know. The little things.

We always went to the Easter Vigil growing up even though it is incredibly long because my parents thought that it was important to welcome the newly baptized and confirmed. The Easter Vigil at the Basilica was in our plans for this year because Chris had to attend, but I knew something was different when I walked by around 3:30 and saw people already camped out with tables and cards waiting in line for the doors to open at 7pm.

This feels like Christmas! I kept thinking.

No! No! I corrected myself. This feels like Easter!
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As expected, the Easter Vigil was glorious. That's all there is to it. The whole liturgy was glorious and was such a testimony to the glory of the victory Christ won for us. I hope someday you can make it to the Basilica for the Easter Vigil because my mind can't tell my fingers how to type an adequate description. Maybe someone else who has been there can say I will say that after Mass and after a little party for the newest members of the Church, Chris and I didn't want to go home! We just didn't want the night to end. We were riding the high of the Easter Vigil. Being the exciting couple that we are, that meant we went to CVS and bought toiletries then to 7-Eleven because CVS didn't have Bugles. 

Christmas' anticipated joy is wonderful, but, for me now, it just doesn't hold an Easter candle to the anticipated joy of Easter.
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The most dry turkey in the all the land + a lot of the Easter Feast. 

Special thanks to Meagan and David for watching the kids so we could be crazy and go out ... to Mass at 9PM.

Extra thanks to all who cooked on Sunday to make that feast up there ^^^, especially my sister who stayed sane the whole time I was barking orders at her.

Can you spare some prayers for my best friend's brother-in-law's cousin and his parents? His little body isn't able to handle all the procedures needed in the last two weeks so his time left here is tragically short.