Tulip Trail

Holy Week and Easter

Lent went by especially quickly this year, and Holy Week was no exception…it was a complete blur!

On Palm Sunday, Ladybug turned my palm into a cross as she always does:

On Monday, we baked hot cross buns:

Tuesday, Chickadee and I visited the Tulip Trail at Eckert’s with the hope of cutting our own tulips for our Easter table…that didn’t work out, but it was still a beautiful experience!

On Wednesday, I made one of our favorite Lenten dinners, fish tacos:

Thursday found us at church for the first service the Holy Triduum:

Before Church on Friday we made this year’s Paschal Candle, and Bunny and I did some pre-Easter baking:

On Holy Saturday I prepped some salads and our mini donut tray for the year…I found a record 18 different kinds!

The Great Vigil of Easter is still my favorite church service of the entire year (even when we have to start indoors because rain made the church garden too mucky)!

After church, we stoped at Wendy’s for fries and a Frosty for everyone:

Easter morning was a bit chilly, but clear and beautiful!

The church looked glorious, as always:

And we got a nice family photo after the service thanks to our field worker from the seminary:

Easter is the one day a year we have a big, fancy breakfast…I even put a little extra effort into setting the table, using some pretty plates I found at Aldi a few years ago that are just the perfect color palette for the day:

We had a pretty traditional meal…biscuits with a choice of sausage gravy or Pflaumenmus (plum butter), scrambled eggs, sausage patties, brie (also good with the plum butter!), fruit salad, pomegranate and orange juices, and did I mention mini donuts?

We had a fun afternoon watching the first two Big, Fat, Greek Wedding movies, and then it was time to reset the table for dinner:

We went Italian for Easter dinner, featuring Peposo (beef cooked with garlic and peppercorns in red wine), lemon-parmesan risotto, braised radicchio with a balsamic glaze, breaded baked artichokes, antipasto salad, and Colomba di Pasqua (a sweet Italian Easter bread) with more Pflaumenmus.

And for dessert, panna cotta with a blueberry-lemon sauce and fresh berries:

This was a great, although busy, Holy Week and Easter! Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

2025-26 School Year–Week Twenty-Seven

Fun things first…Chickadee and I went to Eckert’s to experience their new spring event, the Tulip Trail!

Chickadee worked with exponential growth and decay functions in algebra, and learned how to graph them. In history, we read about JFK, the Civil Rights Movement, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Vietnam War. She is re-reading one of her favorite books in preparation for one of her final writing assignments of the year. In science we talked about currents and resistance, and did a fun experiment with a battery and aluminum foil. And for this week’s recipe from the American Girl Sweet & Savory Treats Cookbook, we made plum fruit leather (using three different kinds of plums), inspired by 2019 Girl of the Year, Blaire!

Now that it’s April, the end of the school year is coming fast…I can’t believe Chickadee is almost done with 8th grade!

On the Tulip Trail

It’s tulip time in Belleville!

Eckert’s is offering a fun new spring event this year…the Tulip Trail!

Tulips are my favorite spring flower, and I have always wanted to experience rows upon rows of them like you see in photos of Holland, so of course I had to make time to follow the Tulip Trail. It did not disappoint…there are 300,000 tulips in every type and color you can dream of, in neat, orderly rows just like I imagined!

It’s amazing just how many different kinds of tulips there are, from ones with spiky petals to the traditional rounded variety, and some with ruffled edges, too. I also really liked the stripey ones!

There are lots of fun photo spots throughout the trail…I especially liked the bicycle!

The main attraction, though (other than the flowers themselves, of course!), is a windmill made in the Eckert’s workshop:

There is something fun and beautiful to see everywhere you look!

This is such a unique experience…I don’t think there’s anything like it anywhere else in the St. Louis area. It was super busy, so it’s obviously something people are interested in, and I really hope it becomes an annual event. The only disappointment we had while we were there was that they weren’t offering the cut your own tulip experience at that time, and we were really hoping to choose some for our Easter table. I would love to have the chance to go back in the future and create my own bouquet!

Tulip time never lasts long enough, but they’ll be around for a while yet, and if you have the opportunity to visit, I highly recommend it!