Santa Matt's ramblings

So the whole family gets together for a late breakfast or brunch. All of my kids and grand kids were there and Pam's fiancee' Zack and Monica's brother and his two kids. Quite a few of us and a small table for the grand kids and their chaperon which doesn't show in the pictures.  Here we have Ralph and Angela, Monica's Brother Steve and James Here we have James again and his wife Adrienne, Pam and Zack. In the background you can see Jonathon, Steve's son and the chaperon for the grandkids table around the corner.  I peeled a blue colored egg and it must have had a small hole in the shell. Look at the interesting pattern it left.  Jonathon took turns giving his second cousins piggyback and horsey rides. Here is Sera's turn as soon as she puts down here Easter loot.  Here is Angela and Monica sitting and chilling, talking to James in the picture below. In the background you can see Jonathon giving AJ a ride. I think AJ enjoyed it more t...

Easter is the holiest day of the year for Catholics. We believe that what took place on that first Easter two millenniums ago changed all of creation for all of time. So we try and make it special. Catholics also mark days like our Jewish brethren as sundown to sundown, not midnight to midnight. So starting a bit before sundown on Holy Saturday, we start the vigil for the celebration of Easter. We start outside of our darkened church. There we light a fire against the darkness. From that fire we light the new Easter candle that we will use for the next year. From the Easter candle we light our individual candles and enter the church following the Easter candle and the priest. In this picture are some of the altar servers waiting to start the procession.  Okay, one little flash picture just so you can see the Easter candle being carried by the deacon and father in the background in white and gold vestments. The church is lit only by the candles as...

OK, so I'm a lousy writer. I never seem to have anything to say when I sit down to blog. Wow! Two years since my last blog. Well I've decided to make a change! I will begin with this post to make this a photo blog. I take tons of pictures and I'm going to start post pictures with captions and occasional longer text. So here goes the first one: Every Easter we have a traditional Slovak breakfast. My wife Monica is pure Slovak and pure Catholic. So we have this tradition, we make all of this special food and take it to the church Saturday and get it blessed by the priest. Here are pictures from the blessing.   The basket with the square handle is ours. Father Gary comes out singing lines from "Tradition" from "Fiddler on the Roof"  He reads some of the traditional prayers from the book. Talks about the tradition and then blesses the food with more prayers and the sprinkling of holy water. Most people give him samples of their bakery in grati...