It’s important for moms to recognize that all the small successes in our days can add up to one big triumph. So on Thursday of each week, we do exactly that.  See everyone's miniature triumphs and add your own at http://www.faithandfamilylive.com/

1. Our family had a lovely Easter despite only the most intermittent sunshine. The house was stuffed with family, which is how I love it on holidays.
2. Despite the cooking, candy-buying, and assorted catering to the needs of visiting family, I managed to get to both Easter vigil and to Easter morning mass. Vigil has all the liturgical fireworks, but the sequence sung on Easter morning is very special as well, and I'm so glad I caught it this year.
3. I had a birthday this week--no great accomplishment--but I did  plan and carry out my day exactly the way I wanted it: a lovely day-trip with my husband, which began with a beautiful lakeside hiking trail at a state park we had never visited before, and finished with a shopping spree  at an outlet mall. Thanks be to God that the one day this month with (almost) no rain was my birthday!  On the way home we picked up several Little Caesar's $5 pizzas and a chocolate cake. Then we had a very pleasant, relaxed birthday dinner with the kids.  From now on, my husband and I will have to have a monthly day trip to explore more of the local attractions we'd never gotten around to seeing.

A week of Easters

I have't been blogging much because I'm having too much fun enjoying this week of Easters, aka the Octave of Easter. Doubly so, since my birthday was yesterday, and I usually excuse various splurges and indulgences for the next several days  by reminding my family that since it is the "octave of my birthday", these items are fitting ways to commemorate my birth.

But back to the week of Easters. We're reminded each of these blessed days that it STILL IS EASTER by the day's psalter, which is identical to that of Easter Sunday. The same glorious antiphons about the resurrection, and the same psalmody. In fact, Sunday week I of the psalter is used for every solemnity and feastday.   This makes it pretty easy to get Psalm 63 (O God You are my God, for you I long) and Psalm 149 (Sing a New song to the Lord) memorized after a while.   The Canticle of Daniel is another story. I have been trying to get this one by heart for the last  twenty years, and still get tripped up with the "weather verses" in the second strophe. I either mix up "dew and rain" with "shower and dew", or else forget whether "light and darkness" comes before or after " lightnings and clouds".

Probably I will get it all down straight right in time for the new breviaries, which will contain the new Grail psalms translation, and will have to start all over again. But I'm told that this event is at least seven years away, so will not worry about it now.

I hope all of you are having a week of Easters. This is one of only two Fridays of the year when you are not expected to do any penance on Friday, even if it is your habit to skip meat on Fridays year round. Have a steak or some fried chicken this week in honor of the Resurrection. If the kids have finished their Easter candy, buy some more--it's half price this week.

The Lord is Risen, Alleluia!

This is the day the Lord has made. And tomorrow. And the next day.