"Answer Me This" Linkup, week 2.

Oh my gosh, I almost forgot my "Hallelujah, he is risen!" He is risen indeed.

Kendra at Catholic All Year is hosting a weekly linkup. She provides the questions, you provide the answers, and then you link up with everyone back on her page. It's a great way to get to know a little about your fellow bloggy travelers, as well as a chance to consider some things about yourself that you hadn't before. Join us! 

Kendra's answers, next week's questions and the linkup can be found here.

1. What did you and your family wear to Mass on Easter Sunday?
Michael looked extremely dapper in a suit and tie, even if I had to twist his arm a little to get him that fancy; I wore this dress from ModCloth; and Keira wore the sa-weetest toile dress with a French ticking sash. Girlfriend recently had her first trim, so now her bangs don't hang in her eyes when she refuses to wear any of the lovely hair implements with which I'm always trying to wrangle her locks so she doesn't look like a ragamuffin. 

And thanks very much, Kendra, for the reminder to take a family photo! I may take half a dozen pictures every time Keira watches Frozen with her mouth hanging open, but I am not good about documenting family occasions. 

Unfortunately, the reminder didn't help because even though I remembered, we didn't have time with wrangling everyone to Mass on time to do it before, and then after a very crowded, long and hot Mass Princess Fussypants was in full-on meltdown mode. She screamed all the way home and by the time we got here my hair was standing on end, I had to get lunch done for my in-laws, and she was desperately in need of a nap. So instead, here's a picture of Keira watching Frozen with her mouth hanging open:

2. Easter Bunny: thumbs up or thumbs down?
Thumbs up, I guess? I was in the mall recently with a friend and noticed the Easter Bunny, sitting where Santa used to, for overpriced portraits. "Is that something I'm supposed to do with Keira?" I asked. She, not yet having children, kind of shrugged at me.

Ultimately I decided to skip it. I don't remember ever getting my picture taken with the Easter Bunny as a child. Plus, our visit to Santa was a success (by which I mean we got an adorable photo even though she was scared), but I just think the enormous anthropomorphic bunny might be actively traumatizing. Santa may have been a stranger, but he was clearly human.

I mean... Right? Adorbs.

I'm sure when she's older than 18 months we'll tell her that the Easter Bunny brought her Easter basket, but there will be no effort to convince her that it's true (whereas I will be a Santa-invoking Mom). A bunny has nothing to do with Jesus' resurrection. (I mean, I get the baby bunny as a symbol of rebirth, I do. But the Easter Bunny is decidedly a big ol' grown RABBIT.)

[Santa may not be a Biblical part of the story of Christ's birth, either, but my sister's church, where we go to the children's Mass on Christmas Eve, always has Santa stop by before Mass. He enters in silence, walks down the aisle, kneels to pray in front of baby Jesus in the manger, and then leaves again, still in silence. 

Tell me how you're going to have a powerful moment like that with a giant rodent, and maybe I'll get more on board with the Easter Bunny. In fact, I think I just talked myself out of the Easter Bunny.]

3. Do you prefer to celebrate holidays at your own house or at someone else's house?
My mom's house is the best for holidays. She's such a good cook, and it's all very low-key except for the cousins (ranging in age from 9 down to 6 months, so far) running around shrieking their joy at being together. If I can't go to my mom's, because she lives four hours away, then I prefer to host. I'm still learning how to Martha it up when I can't devote my entire consciousness to it like I used to; a toddler pulls focus like no other! But when we're at someone else's house, I have to worry about what she'll get into, so in the balance that's why I like to host. And I even figured out how to fold napkins into bunnies, so maybe my inner Martha is coming out of hibernation at last.

4. What is your favorite kind of candy?
I have distinct moods. My favorite chocolate-based candy is probably Snickers, whereas I'd probably reach for Skittles if I wanted fruity. Peeps and candy corn are both of the devil, so it's good that they're only around once a year each. 

5. Do you like video games?
I lived for Mario on the original flavor Nintendo as a kid. I mean, not really lived for it, but I bet if you handed me the controller to an old school Nintendo console and turned on Mario Bros. or Mario 3, I would still be able to play as if I played last yesterday. Remember how the sides of your thumbs used to go numb? Good times.

I used to babysit for a couple of boys who banned me from playing their James Bond game with them because I was a spaz (on Nintendo-64, I think?); I used to get stuck in corners because I would freak out and forget to just turn my character around. 

Nowadays, I guess I like task-oriented games okay, if I'm trying to kill some time. 

6. Do you speak another language?
I speak pretty fluent Toddler. I took a whole lot of French in high school, such that I should have been close to conversational. At the time the consensus was that my accent was pretty good, but I bet it was awfully Philadelphian. In any case, 90+% of my French is long gone. 

I can pronounce anything in Latin from years of singing in it, but I don't necessarily know what most of it means. I comfort myself with the fact that no one speaks Latin; it's a dead language.