Pascha - Something Old, Something New

Yesterday the Eastern Orthodox celebrated Great and Holy Pascha. We made it through the late, late night service which I described on my other blog and then came home and took a nice, long nap. When we woke up we decided to keep the tradition of hiding baskets for the kids. The baskets held treats that were in scarce supply throughout Great Lent as well as a small toy for each child. The hunt was great fun. Of course, Nathan was the first to find his basket and the others followed behind. Tad and JT decided to give their new gps unit a workout and geocached each other's Easter surprises. Tad hid JT's basket up a tree and JT hid Tad's container of beef jerkey in our neighbor, Mr. Frank's yard. Mr. Frank wasn't home to ask if this was ok so JT hid it under a tree and hoped for the best, trusting in Mr. Frank's friendliness to smooth over any troubles. It took JT a while to get the hang of following the gps directions and he discovered his basket long after the others used the more traditional method, they looked UP. Tad's was bit harder. He tracked his jerkey down to a particular corner and tramped into Mr. Frank's yard with his entourage following closely behind. They all arrived at the tree where the booty was stashed but...no booty!! This was followed by a trip to Mr. Frank's front door where he greeted our crew with a very apologetic look. He had found the stash and assumed some neighbor kids had tossed it there. Not knowing what it was, he stowed it away in his garage. It was duly returned to the intended recipient and JT learned a gentle lesson in geocaching without the permission of the property owner!

The rest of the day was spent feasting out of our Pascha baskets on every sort of meat that sparked their desires - beef jerkey, ham and fried chicken, along with breads and chocolate and cheese cake. It was a wonderfully lazy, content day!