Palm Sunday Happenings

The King of glory comes, the nation rejoices.
Open the gates before him, lift up your voices.

It was a LONG Mass and much harder to get into the church today. You'd think they were giving out salvation or something:) We did our typical 11:30 AM Mass. John was fairly well behaved and Tim had to take him out the the Narthex only once during the year long Gospel. Okay, it was really twenty minutes, but it seems longer to the wee ones. Kudos to Father for not saying a homily after this one.

I really do love Palm Sunday. I love the imagry of it all. John, however, enjoyed the palms. When Tim took him out for a break, he ended up finding the table of palms and trying to grab some and tried to pass them out to the other little kids in the Narthex. When they came back, John tried to grab a handful of palms from the people behind us. He also may have teethed on his palm. Ah well, Jesus DOES love the little children. The people behind us ended up complimenting us on how well behaved our son was. Ha!

Someone did call our son Jack today, and I immediately corrected them with John. I guess after thirty years of correcting people who call me Kathy has rubbed off.

I had read about some Easter Hoppings downtown, and we decided to check them out.

I did forget three things 1) I hate crowds. 2) I hate waiting. 3) John could care less if he didn't see the Easter Bunny. So we got off the beaten track and made a day of it. First stop, fire truck. John looks like a natural. Could this possibly be a career choice?

Then, we visited the Landmark Church, home of the Tinley Park Historical Society. I love learning about history, especially local history. At the Society, we saw an old aerial view of Tinley and two of the schools that Tim attended as a child were on it as they appeared in the late 50s. It was something to realize that this was what downtown looked like a few years later when my mom attended the nearby Catholic grade school a few blocks away. There was also the bell from the first school in the distict I attended as a child. Pretty darn cool.
I've been dying to see the Historical Society, and although it was small, it was sure worth it!

Best of all for John is that in the basement of the Landmark Church was a coloring station and Bunny Buckets! Tim and I colored, trying to get John interested, but he wasn't quite ready. I did make a bunny mask for him while he had a ball, literally.

We also visited the Vogt Visual Arts Center where they had some fantastic art work displayed. I honestly would have bought something if I had a spare couple hundred, which is amazing as art doesn't do much for me. But all the stuff there was so real and beautiful. I honestly liked it all, especially a scene of downtown Chicago in the fall which was breathtaking. So glad I had the chance to see it.

 

We rounded up our trip downtown with a late lunch at an eatery downtown. We had two great experiences with our rehearsal dinner and John's after baptism luncheon at this place. Today, not so great. The waitress sat us at a booth much too small for us and got mad that we got up and sat at an empty table. She made a big deal of us needing a high chair, saying it would be in the way, although it wasn't any more in the way than any other one there. Then, since milk isn't included in the kid's meal we bought John, but pop is, we were charged for it and John hardly drank it. She only refilled our drinks once, was late bringing the bill and bringing it back and served more attitude than food. We ordered appetizers and they got cold fast. The only saving grace was a delicious antipasta salad.What a disappointment!
John thought so too.

All in all, it was another great weekend with my boys. In this life, we have to look for the blessings of every day. Today, I was blessed to spend time with my guys, attend a beautiful Mass and got to explore our beautiful downtown.



He conquered sin and death. He truly has risen,
And He will share with us His heavenly vision.