Easter 2019

We had a slightly different Easter this year that in years past.  Becasue Serafina goes to public school, she had all of Semana Santa (or Holy Week) off of school -- spring break essentially.  And we decided to travel (post coming soon, I promise).

Semana Santa is the week leading up to Easter, starting with Palm Sunday or Domingo de Ramos and every town in Spain celebrates with processions -- read more about the celebrations here (2016) and here (2017) or here (2018).  So instead of going to all the processions, we spent the week traveling around Portugal.

But we did arrive back in time for Serafina and I to catch one procession, the one on Viernes Santo or Good Friday.  This processin starts usually very early in the morning (like 2am) and goes until noon-ish, so the whole procession is walking for 10+ hours.  Serafina and I saw the procession towards the end.  It was amazing to see and we even saw a few of Serafina's classmates who had been walking for part of the procession as well!

Trevor and I also had a date night this evening and went to some of the processions that occur later in the evening on Good Friday.  These processions are much more somber than many of the others because they are depicting Jesus dying on the cross, so while it is a more quiet atmosphere than a typical Spanish event, it is still amazing to see.

We also went to the Easter event on base -- a huge color run and an egg hunt.  We skipped the color run (we did it last year) and just went for the egg hunt which sadly was a little disappointing for all of us. Serafina was in an age group with four to six year olds and she just got ran over by the older/bigger kids and couldn't get any eggs.  It was really sad to watch -- but she did love seeing her friends and playing in the bounce houses.  No pictures because it was pretty caotic...

Then we had a very lazy and family filled Easter Sunday.  Serafina enjoyed her goodies from her Easter baskets (one from us and one from my parents!).  We had a wonderful brunch with just us and then went to the beach later in the afternoon -- again no pictures because we were too busy enjoying the moments!

So while our Easter looked very different than in years past, we still loved celebrating together as a family.  I hope you all had a wonderful Easter however you celebrated!