Happy Easter!

chocolate bunny
Originally uploaded by erickpineda527.

Today is Easter and this time around I conceded to El's request to go to church. We go twice a year it seems - Easter and Christmas Eve. Shame on me.

Near the Premium Outlet Mall (with Banana Republic!) is Mary Queen of the Universe. We used to make fun of it because of how HUGE and extravangant it was. "They must be Baptist" was our standard joke seeing it everytime we drove by enroute to go shopping - until we found out it was Catholic and designed for the benefit of tourists. Well this year, jokes aside, we decided to attend mass there.

The compund itself it beautiful in a kind of touristy, theme park way - complete with a gift shop! Fountains, Rosary Garden, and a huge monument with sponsor's plaques on it adorned the gigantic church. The shrine itself was clean and well maintained. Four services today and the priest was no joke. He got right to the point about the history of the shrine and how sinful it was to miss church, disagree with the church on anything and take communion without confession recently. El and I decided to forego the communion. We're guilty as sin - literally.

We did both agree, though, before mass started that we would make a better attempt at going back to church on Sundays and even going to confession soon. And "tah-dah!" we're blasted by the priest. Not personally, but you get the point. The service was nice and flowers covered the floor of the altar. The congregation is Catholics from all over the world visiting who first pay homage to the modern golden idol of Mickey Mouse (how ironic) with very few locals in attendance.

Afterwards, Rachel, El and I decided to have lunch at Bahama Breeze for a (somewhat) light lunch. The sky got a little grey and we figured it was going to rain, which it didn't.