Orthodox Easter 2013

Happy Easter to the people of Armenia and Bulgaria and everyone else who celebrates this holiday today according to the calendar of the Orthodox Catholic Church.

We were fortunate enough to be invited again to enjoy the afternoon with our local Bulgarian community.  As always, they rented a lodge and brought on the food and fun.

The potluck dinner was delicious and plentiful, consisting of traditional Bulgarian Easter dishes like lamb, rice,  banitsa, lots of salads and sides, and kozunak.

Kozunatzi - more and more of them arrived later

I contributed hummus and tortilla chips (Rex loves that as a snack) and homemade lemon cupcakes.  I told Craig after so many months of GFDF baking, I wanted to concoct something utterly unhealthy and delectable, full of butter, sugar and wheat flour.  So I started with a lemon cake mix, but used butter instead of oil and milk and freshly squeezed lemon juice instead of water which made for some rich cupcakes.  The butter cream was prepared from scratch per my family recipe and I added lemon oil for flavor.  And then I mixed freshly grated lemon zest with sanding sugar to sprinkle on top.  That said, I will never be a good cake decorator because I lack all kinds of patience and don't enjoy it nearly as much as I do the baking.

Fortunately, there's lots of papery help from the store to make cupcakes look scrumptious.

We were so excited to meet our friends, the Van Roekels, at the Easter celebration again.  Their son Nikolas and Emilia were at the same orphanage together, so we are happy to keep their connection alive.  We were so impressed with how much progress both of these little ones have made in the last year.  Nikolas was very protective of and interested in Emilia today.  She also enjoyed his company, but wasn't quite as committed to the relationship.  Maybe she was thinking, "You're a super cool dude, but I have to keep my options open, okay?" Here they are playing:

As always, we felt so warmly welcomed by our local Bulgarian community and enjoyed the food, the dancing and music, the Easter egg hunt, and the company.  Nikolas even performed some Bulgarian songs with the other kids and Emilia danced along.  Wish the weather could have been better, but the wee Martinis were not deterred by the rain:

Our kids did great and lasted three hours at this very loud, very busy celebration, but on the way home, the peanut gallery was quiet:

I think an early bedtime might be in the cards tonight.