Today is one of my favorite days of the entire Christmas season…Nikolaustag!
We tend to celebrate this holiday in a German way, so of course our main activity today was…Christmas on The Hill?
Yes, some of us spent the afternoon in the Italian neighborhood of St. Louis to attend a fun local event. It wasn’t our normal Nikolaustag, but it was fun to switch things up a bit! And we still had our traditional dinner of chicken Döner Kebab this evening:
It wasn’t quite our regular Nikolaustag, especially since Bunny had to work today, and Turkey was at school taking a scary national math exam, but it was fun!
Last week, I was mentioning how much I was looking forward to Michaelmas, (which was yesterday), one of my favorite principal feasts of Christ on the church calendar. Ladybug immediately responded with “What are you making?”
Nothing?
I hadn’t planned on doing anything special. No angel hair pasta. No angel food cake. No fancy or themed food of any kind. Mondays are kind of a crazy busy day here this semester, and I didn’t figure it was worth it.
But this is what I’ve worked for all these years. My adult children hearing a church festival is coming up, and knowing that it’s a day for special food and feasting, a day to look forward to and celebrate. A day to recognize how God has provided for His people through the years.
This was the goal all along.
I can’t change how busy Mondays are. We didn’t have the time for a fancy dinner. But I did have time on Sunday after to church to bake an angel food cake, and I even found time to stop at Walmart to get some fresh strawberries to go with it.
I am so thankful that the traditions we’ve created over the years mean something. I’m grateful I found ways to make connections between the church year and home life. I’m glad that Ladybug heard a church holiday was coming up and wanted to know how we were going to celebrate it.
“I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.”
As always, our Easter celebration really begins with the start of the Holy Triduum on Maundry Thursday. As it turns out, that was the most beautiful day of the whole Easter weekend, and the last time we’d see blue skies!
On Friday, I did a bit of prep work for Sunday…I tried a new (very successful!) recipe for flatbreads, and also made hot cross buns:
We went back to church Friday evening, and the cloudy skies seemed appropriate for the day.
On Saturday, we did some more work…Ladybug frosted the cupcakes she made the day before, and I baked a baklava cheesecake.
We also made our 2025 Paschal candle while watching Rick Steves’ European Easter…both are important Holy Saturday traditions to us.
And then my favorite church service of the entire year…with a twist. The overnight rain made it impossible to begin the Great Vigil of Easter outside by the bonfire as usual, so we had a “bonfire” in the back of the sanctuary to start the service. All things considered, it was a good solution to a soggy problem!
We always get Wendy’s on the way home from church on Saturday evening:
And then back to church this morning for the most celebratory service of the year!
The family photo isn’t quite right without Bunny, but she couldn’t get away from school to join us…we’ll see her in a few weeks for graduation, though!
Our Easter breakfast was a bit simpler than I’ve made some years…scrambled eggs, sausage, a fruit salad, pomegranate juice, and like last year, 13 kinds of mini donuts!
We had fun watching the first two My Big Fat Greek Wedding movies, and I made lavender matchas for those who enjoy them:
And I set the table, featuring the new Paschal candle and a new bunny napkin fold that incorporated the Cadbury Creme Eggs I had picked up:
I found some time to check into Animal Crossing, and Roald was nice enough to take a picture with me!
I made a menu of Greek foods for dinner…souvlaki and gyros, with our favorite toppings and flatbread, fried feta, Greek salad, and spanakopita, plus the hot cross buns…kind of minus the crosses, which mostly melted to the plastic wrap!
And for dessert, the baklava cheesecake:
After how long Lent always seems, Holy Week, and especially the Holy Triduum and Easter Sunday itself go by so quickly, but we had a lovely celebration…Happy Easter!
We’re a day late, but today we celebrated Nikolaustag! We wanted to wait until Bunny was home from college, which just happened to be today. We did all of our favorite Nikolaustag things, starting with stockings and decorating the tree. In addition to the children’s yearly ornaments, I also added two new ornaments…a Christmas Tree Cake that Ryan surprised me with this morning, and Hallmark’s rendition of “It’s a Small World.”
We always have wassail while we decorate:
And for dinner, we had our traditional meal of döner kebab:
I like to make a gingerbread dessert for Nikolaustag…this year, it was gingerbread whoopie pies:
This is one of my favorite days of the year, and between Bunny being home and the traditions, it feels like Christmastime is really here!
This year, in order to take a look back at our Easter celebration, we have to back way up, to before Holy Week even began! While Bunny was home from college on spring break, I made hot cross buns, and we made the paschal candle for the year, so she wouldn’t have to miss out on everything. Unfortunately, she had to go back to school the day before Palm Sunday, so she didn’t get to join us for that (or any of the church services that followed).
Our Holy Week was pretty standard, even though we were missing having Bunny at home. We went to church on Maundy Thursday:
On Good Friday, when I wasn’t teaching school, I was working in the kitchen, chopping things and making pita bread. Ladybug helped out by baking and decorating some cupcakes for me:
And then we went to church. The service was beautiful, as was the sunset we were treated to upon leaving the building:
On Saturday, I was back at work in the kitchen, making baklava, tsoureki (a Greek Easter Bread), and prepping other various components of our Easter dinner:
I also did a little work on decorating, including pairing some linens in a new way for the kitchen island and making our napkins look like bunnies!
And then it was time for the best church service of the year, The Great Vigil of Easter!
On the way home, according to tradition, we stopped at Wendy’s for Frostys and fries, and watched Rick Steves’ European Easter.
Back to church this morning for a service filled with joy and beautiful music!
It was weird taking pictures of only four of the children. Since things were already different, I decided that instead of taking my usual pictures by the font, I’d go with the Paschal Candle as the backdrop instead:
And a picture of…the Fab Four? Nope…that just isn’t right!
Also a picture of 6/7 of our family:
I planned a special Easter breakfast this year…I finally learned how to make omelettes! So we had a made-to-order omelette bar, featuring ham and smoked salmon, dill, chives, mushrooms, bell peppers, and two kinds of cheese:
We also had mixed berries, 13(!!!!) kinds of mini donuts (Seasonal varieties included carrot cake, blueberry, peach cobbler, spring sprinkles, honey bun, strawberry shortcake, plus the standards: powdered, old fashioned, glazed, frosted, zebra, crunch, and double chocolate ), pink pineapple, and the requisite Easter candy:
Here’s a look at our completed Osterstrauß, which was the centerpiece of our buffet:
I chose a smoked salmon, dill, and mushroom omelette, and it was delicious! I also really enjoyed the pink pineapple, which I thought tasted a little bit like watermelon…it might have just been a mental thing because it looked kind of like watermelon, though!
I didn’t have a whole lot of work to do this afternoon since I had prepped so much of dinner, so I had plenty of time for setting the table while we watched the first two My Big Fat Greek Wedding movies:
My family requested gyros for dinner, so I seasoned some sizzle steak with gyros seasoning we found at the international market and cooked it in my best approximation of gyros. We had all our favorite toppings: homemade tzatziki sauce, tomatoes, onions, and feta cheese:
I decided to go full-on Greek with our dinner, including a Greek salad, spanakopita, the previously-mentioned tsoureki, and because I’m still scared of making saganaki, fried feta coated in sesame seeds. The only thing missing was dolmas (stuffed grape leaves)…maybe someday I’ll tackle those!
I’ve been thinking about doing a Greek Easter dinner for a few years, so I really enjoyed it!
In keeping with our Greek theme, we had baklava sundaes for dessert:
And I found some time to stop by and say “hi” to Zipper T. Bunny!
This was our first big holiday without all of us here, which was weird and sad, but we made the best of it, and it was still a lovely Easter!
We have one Labor Day tradition that has been going on so long, I can’t even remember how it started…we always have chili and (usually) fry bread Labor Day Weekend!
This year, I tried a new twist. We had extra fry bread, so I made fry bread sundaes for dessert. The crunchy saltiness of the fry bread was the perfect foil to the ice cream, and it was so good! I will definitely be making this again!
I love the little traditions that you don’t plan that just kind of happen!
As hard as it is to believe since Lent always seems like it lasts forever, Holy Week and Easter Sunday have already come and gone. We had our traditional four day celebration, beginning on Maundy Thursday, with a fun twist for Easter dinner this year! I really look forward to this celebration every year, this 2023 did not disappoint!
On Maundy Thursday, I made hot cross buns. This is definitely a tradition now…what started as an experiment in 2020 when I was only grocery shopping once every two weeks and couldn’t plan on purchasing them has become an expected part of our Holy Week observances! I did try a new recipe this time, and I think we all liked it even better than the other ones I’ve made!
The evening church service was, as expected, lovely, especially the music.
Everyone had off of school on Good Friday, which was nice. I dedicated my day to baking. I made what were probably the best buttermilk biscuits ever, as well as blueberry muffins:
We were back at church that evening for another moving service:
Would you be surprised to know that I was back to baking on Holy Saturday? I made my first-ever angel food cake…keep reading to see how it turned out!
We also made this year’s Paschal candle…I think this was our best effort ever!
The Great Vigil of Easter is still my favorite service of the whole church year…I love the meaning behind each different part!
On the way home, we stopped at Wendy’s for Frostys and fries:
Sunday morning dawned bright and beautiful!
One of my favorite traditions is taking pictures of the Fab Five by the baptismal font:
Of course, I took other pictures, too:
We also got a very nice family photo:
When we got home, we had Easter brunch (our first brunch of the day…stay with me!). I made biscuits and gravy, and we also had scrambled eggs, sausage patties, and a variety of mini donuts. And pomegranate juice, which has become something of a tradition.
It was a great first meal of the day!
We watched some of our favorite Easter specials, and I visited Zipper T. Bunny when I wasn’t working on our big meal.
I learned how to turn our napkins into flowers for Easter!
I love how pretty the Easter table always looks!
For Easter dinner, we had Easter brunch (again). But this was a fancier brunch suggested by Turkey, including eggs Benedict, breakfast casserole, bacon, waffles, a salmon and radish tart, fresh fruit, gouda tea sandwiches, blueberry muffins, and a cheese board.
It was fun (and delicious!) to do something so different for dinner!!!
For dessert, we had the angel food cake I made, served with strawberries and a cream cheese filling/frosting…it was really good!
Easter is, of course, the highlight of the church year, and our celebration this year at church and home was especially lovely!
Time for a look back at another Markel Family Easter, which started, as it does every year, on Maundy Thursday:
On Friday, I made hot cross buns (again), but this year, I tried a new recipe:
The Good Friday service was, as always, lovely and moving:
On Saturday morning, while we watched Rick Steves’ European Easter, we made our Paschal Candle for the year…I think this may be the nicest job we’ve ever done!
While I did have work to do on Saturday to prepare for our Easter dinner, most of the day was really spent waiting until it was finally time for my favorite service of the church year, the Great Vigil of Easter:
After church, we stopped at Wendy’s for Frostys and fries:
We’re still getting used to the fact that we don’t have to get up for a sunrise Easter service, so we felt a little more leisurely about getting ready. We were still at church early enough to take pictures outside:
And some indoors, including our traditional by-the-baptismal-font Easter pictures:
The church looked especially beautiful!
Ladybug even got to acolyte:
And we got a nice family picture after the service:
When we got home, I made Easter breakfast, which included Kaiserschmarrn (the Kaiser’s torn pancakes) with Rhabarberkompott (rhubarb compote), hard-boiled eggs (this is really the first time we’ve ever dyed eggs…you’ll see why in a minute), and pomegranate juice:
While we watched Easter Parade and My Big, Fat, Greek Wedding, I found time to play a little Animal Crossing: New Horizons so I could visit with Zipper T. Bunny. I also caught up with Roald, who was wearing an egg suit…I wonder if that’s what he looked like when he hatched?
I spent most of the rest of the day working on dinner and setting the table:
I chose an Italian theme for this year’s dinner. I served the same lamb in the slow cooker we had last year (technically Greek, but more generically Mediterranean, so close enough), lemon parmesan risotto, insalata caprese, roasted cauliflower, panzanella, breaded artichokes, capers, olives, Italian Easter bread, and lemon Italian soda.
I stuck with the Italian theme for dessert…we had cannoli and Italian sprinkle cookies:
This was an especially nice Easter. Maybe it’s because things felt more “normal” (I actually shook hands for the first time in over two years!), maybe it was because the church services were so meaningful, maybe it was because this may be the nicest Easter dinner I’ve ever made. Whatever the reason, I’m thankful we had such a wonderful celebration of Christ’s resurrection!
Time for another look at a Markel Family holiday in the time of COVID-19!
Last year, I was all about keeping as many things as normal as possible for everyone. This year, I decided to embrace the new and different as much as I could. For starters, even though I’m now back to grocery shopping once a week instead of every two weeks, and could have bought hot cross buns from the bakery, I decided to make a batch again this year:
We went to our new church for the evening Maundy Thursday service to begin the Holy Triduum, and it was short, but very nice:
On Good Friday we were back at our new church for an equally moving (and equally short) Tenebrae service:
On Holy Saturday, we watched Rick Steves’ European Easter and made our Paschal candle for the year, as is our tradition. This one didn’t turn out so well, but it still gets the job done!
We attended the Great Vigil of Easter at our new church…I’m so glad they offer that service. More of it was spent outside than we are used to, and that was really nice!
After church, instead of getting sundaes from McDonald’s like we usually do, we got Frosty’s and fries at Wendy’s, and I introduced the Fab Five to the culinary experience that is dipping the fries in the Frosty:
We didn’t have a sunrise service this year, but I was still up early enough to see the sunrise:
And even though we didn’t need to leave the house super-early, I still bought our traditional Pop-Tarts:
It was a beautiful morning!
I took pictures of the Fab Five in the garden outside of church:
Since I couldn’t really take pictures of them inside the church (and especially by the baptismal font) like I usually do, I did that the day of Chickadee’s confirmation:
Our new church is beautiful!
After church, we came home and made Easter breakfast…eggs and sausage, English muffins, pomegranate juice, and every flavor of mini donut I could find…seven varieties. Maybe we’ll be able to go to Easter breakfast at church again in the future, but for now, it’s nice to have the meal at home!
I may have completed all of the Bunny Day goals in Animal Crossing: New Horizons last year, but I still checked in with Zipper T. Bunny:
We had fun watching some of our favorite Easter movies today, including My Big, Fat Greek Wedding, Easter Parade, and It’s the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown. While we did that, I made sure the table looked pretty for dinner:
And made our Easter feast for dinner. I tried a new leg of lamb recipe in the crock-pot, which was both amazingly delicious and easy. We also had Greek potatoes, carrot fritters, Brussels sprouts, asparagus, breaded artichokes, cherry Jell-O, and popovers:
For dessert, I made carrot cake Oreo truffles:
No matter what stays the same or what is different from year to year, our reason for celebrating remains constant. Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!!!
Time for a look at this year’s scaled-back Christmas celebration. Some things were the same, like starting Christmas Eve with a bowl of Christmas Crunch:
Some things were different…but not necessarily because of COVID-19. I had a fun time playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons and helping Jingle deliver his gifts yesterday morning:
The Fab Five finished this year’s Advent project, Lego Diagon Alley:
And I played Animal Crossing some more:
Our Christmas Eve dinner was different this year…I ordered tamales from Portillo’s, and we had them before church.
I always take pictures before church. This year, I took two sets. One with the year’s hottest accessory:
And one without:
This year, we attended an outdoor Christmas Eve service. It was cold, so we weren’t too sad it was short (although I missed all off the familiar Christmas hymns!). We did chuckle when a helicopter flew over during “Silent Night,” drowning out the singing!
We drove through the Way of Lights on the way home:
For Jesus’ birthday cake this year, I made a peppermint chocolate cake with two kinds of frosting (white chocolate peppermint buttercream inside, and an Italian buttercream outside). I think this is one of the best cakes I’ve ever made!
Of course there were new Christmas jammies:
We skipped playing Ticket to Ride on Christmas Eve, so I just had to fill the stockings and set up the nativity scene under the tree before bed:
We didn’t have to get up early, so we enjoyed our traditional Christmas morning coffee cake a little later than usual (but not much):
And since we didn’t have a Christmas Day service to go to (probably the biggest disappointment of the holiday for me), we opened presents in the morning, which was very strange!
We had our traditional Christmas Eve “pick out dinner” for Christmas Day lunch…and dinner (we’re saving our fancy Christmas feast for Sunday…stay tuned!). Here’s a look at some of the things we had:
We spent the afternoon watching Christmas movies, including my very favorite, White Christmas. We played our annual Christmas Eve game of Ticket to Ride Nordic Countries tonight. And since we were a day late, we also played the new Ticket to Ride game Ryan gave me, the 15th anniversary edition with clear trains, which I love! Everything is different this year…we might as well embrace it!
“Hail, O everlasting morn! Hail, redemption’s happy dawn! Sing through all Jerusalem: ‘Christ is born in Bethlehem!'”
