Next week Maria turns 22 months old. Hard to believe our little girl is 2 months away from turning 2 years old. She a little firecracker who loves her family and loves to make people laugh. This past month Maria learned to use to potty, and I think we can officially say she’s potty trained when at home now. I was hoping we could do this during hot season (since once rainy season starts nothing dries, and it’s just not the time to try potty training). Maria has done great!

We got to spend some extra time with our teammates last month. Salem is Maria’s special friend and has loved holding her since she was little.

Maria loves to talk. Even before she was one, she would talk with all sorts of intonation. She now loves telling stories with the construction, “—- said.” She’s very good at giving commands to all of us, and she doesn’t want to be outdone by her siblings in conversation at the dinner table. She loves singing and knows her tunes well. She loves running around with her two older brothers and laughing!

When I took out this outfit for Maria, I remembered taking pictures of Anna in it when she was 22 months old.

Maria is loved by all and we can’t imagine life without her!

We delayed our Passion Week/Resurrection celebration by two weeks. Originally we were planning to delay by one week, due to the pastor’s Bible School, but then we unexpectedly had to stop in the middle of our Passion Week and finish it up the following week. (Which made Lent a week longer.) For Lent each of us gave up something and/or had a Scripture reading goal. This year we read Amon’s Adventure during Lent. Once Passion Week hit we read Noel Piper’s Lenten Lights each night.

We had our Palm Sunday reading and play. That night we decorated our tree. Isaiah made a tree for us this year. He drilled holes through a tree trunk and put bamboo sticks through it. It worked much better than anything we’ve used.

Monday we reenacted the cleansing of the temple.

Wednesday we had our Easter eggs hunt (see last week’s blog). Thursday we had our Mundy Thursday service with feet washing and remembering the Lord’s Supper. During feet washing we work from oldest to youngest, with the oldest member of the family washing the younger’s feet. Then the youngest children wash Josh’s feet.

Friday we had a Good Friday service. Sunday evening we celebrated the Resurrection. This year we had a meal of steak stips (our neighbor sells grilled meat). It was a delicious meal and really nice for me to not have to prepare a meal after all the busyness of Sunday church. After our meal we sang and did the last Lenten Lights reading. Then we had dessert and passed out cards and gifts. It was a good time celebrating our Lord’s resurrection.

This year we’re celebrating Easter two weeks late – things have been rather full here. Yesterday we had our family Easter egg hunt. We like to keep this a bit separate from Resurrection Sunday, so we usually do it on Wednesday. This year the kids decorated wooden eggs. Each child had his/her own base color to identify the eggs and then added designs on top of that. We figure this can be a project over the years, so there are eggs left to add decorative elements to next year. Maria had plastic eggs this year, since we knew she enjoy painting her eggs a bit more when she’s older. She did get in on the painting morning.

We did the hunt twice – once upstairs and once downstairs. Everyone had a great time. After the hunts were over, we opened our store. The kids traded their eggs in to buy items at the store – headlights, art supplies, candy, etc. It’s a really fun time, and everyone was pleased with their purchases this year.