Today may be the day that my daughter gets sent to the
principal's office in school. She has been sick the last few days and my wife is still sick and home from work. Homework has recently been left all to me. She goes to a catholic school and for those keeping score at home - I am not the most religious person on Earth. Part of the homework due for today stated "Color the symbols for the Lenten Cross, cut them out carefully and bring them in a plastic bag with your name on it." They've had these for a few days but apparently she missed a day when they went over some of the 20 or so symbols. The symbols were about 1.5" square and hand drawn with thick lines making them rather crude with not much detail. I couldn't even make some of them out. Some were obvious, "crown of thorns", "communion bread", "nails". Others? Not so much. I'm not sure if I was too tired to Google these symbols or if I just wanted to get to the math part of the homework since she had a test today, but when she wasn't sure of the meaning of the symbol...I just decided to make something up. She questioned me about the outline of something that looked like a chicken trying to scream. Why is this chicken in obvious distress? Was the site of Jesus being nailed to the cross too much for this particular fowl to witness? I wasn't sure. I told her this was the Lenten Chicken, the one responsible for laying the eggs the Lenten Bunny would hide behind our couch later this week. It was screaming because it hurt
every time an egg came out and it had to do enough eggs for each child to have around twenty or so. She bought it. Good. One down. I had a feeling it was a rooster and there was something to do with the rooster crowing at dawn or something, but since I wasn't 100% sure, I went with the Chicken story. It seemed more plausible. Next, a set of dice and what appeared to be cloth. Dice? I went to Sunday School and Church every blessed Sunday between the ages of birth and 18. I cannot recall one story where Jesus and his friends were rolling bones. Frustrated, I told her Jesus (dice, die)
DIEd for our sins. This morning, when I had more time to Google the answer because I was at work and not home, I discovered that the guards were rolling dice to see who got to keep his clothes. Rats. I was 0-2 on religious facts that most 2
nd graders know. The last one that we weren't sure about was roundish with circular holes and/or craters on the surface. Then it hit me....this was the Lenten Asteroid that fell to Earth and miraculously was the exact size (both width and height) to cover the tomb entrance where Jesus' body was laid to rest. There. Finished. Well, she didn't quite buy that one and thought it looked like a sponge. Ah, yes. But darn if I could remember if it was used to wash some of the wounds or to give him something to drink. I read this morning it was to drink.....wine. I guess there were no open container laws back in the day. I started to regret the fun I had with the Lenten Cross symbols when my daughter demanded my wife get her a Lenten Snack...she was hungry...and then chased the Lenten Cats around the house. Mom was not pleased. I was in deep Lenten
Doo-
Doo.
So on my day off last week, Good Friday, we decided to go to the local Egg "Hunt". Well, as you can see, there is no hunting about it. The local business that sponsors it used to have it at their place on their beautiful grounds where you can also tour their work. I think one look at either of these pictures gives you some indication as to why they chose a different location this year - the local community college. At the old place, they did a new "hunt" every 30 minutes and had a lot of different age classes. Not so this year. One "hunt", two "pens". Zero thru six had a pen and seven thru ten had a pen. I don't even want to guess at the number of participants as the pictures don't do that justice at all. After the first photo was taken, so many more people came that they made a human wall between the pens, that's why in the second picture you can only see one half of the melee. The second half is behind that mess. Also, my lens could only get about half the area. The pens were twice as wide as what I'm showing and by the time they were ready to roll, parents had the entire place surrounded 2 rows deep in some places. All the eggs had something in them, but most were Hershey Kisses. So, to summarize, we drove 15 minutes to get there. We got there 30 minutes before it started and it was very cold and windy, we stood in line to "sign in" which equated to them getting our email address (which they can't verify).....all for 75 seconds of utter confusion where I couldn't even find my own daughter to take her picture because she went into the heart of the battlefield. Egg Hunt? This was easier than shooting fish in a barrel. 
