LENT & FISH

Growing up Catholic and living in the midwest, I've always looked forward to Lent and Easter. The whole midwest part of this has to do with Fish Frys. And if this takes place in other places that's awesome, we just didn't come across Fish Frys in Maryland and people thought we were crazy when we asked about it, so I associate it as a midwest thing.
The last few weeks have been absolutely crazy with Mike's job, lots of late nights so we made it to our first fish fry of the season last night. We headed to one of our favorites in a close-by small town just outside of Omaha. I think this is one of my favorites, although it is a toss up between this one and my parents' childhood parish, where the line wraps and goes through the school's underground tunnels.

Fish fry, beer in hand and with my loves....all is right in the world.

Anyways....Catholics are pretty strict about not eating meat of Fridays so we eat fish (Church law, not God's law), and many of the Omaha Catholic churches put on Fish Frys where you go to to literally eat a meal of fried fish and some form of potato, coleslaw and dessert.

This is such a big deal in Omaha that my parents' old church in particular has a line that wraps around the church and school, so if you're not there by 4:30-5:00 you can expect to wait for a least an hour. Waiting though isn't all that bad because while you wait in the line, there are beer stops.....yeah it's pretty awesome.

Last night we waited for about 45 minutes, but it was definitely worth it! Our line snaked around the main entrance to the church. Of course we had our beer and people were happy to smoosh together and shuffle along.

Kensi happily munched on bread, potato, applesauce, pickles and sour cream packets....she's been an interesting little eater these last two weeks.

This was my favorite photo from last night. Kensi is always giving us this littler smirk with her lips all curled in, I'm so glad we got a picture of it. 

Lent for me is a pretty cool thing too. For my it's such a cleansing process for my mind, body and soul. Growing up I only knew lent as I had to give something up for 40 days that was suppose to be difficult and not eat meat on Fridays. In high school many of my friends had Sundays as their 'cheat' days....where they could do whatever it was that they gave up to make it a little easier...it really is cheating. But now as an adult I not only give something up, but I also challenge myself to do something better. I've decided to give up my lounge clothes during the day (sometimes I won't get dressed for that day until right before Mike comes home! Just so you know, this one isn't going as planned) and I'm challenging myself to be more patient/loving and more organized. Like everyone I have my days where I'm Negative Nelly and I hate that! In addtion to those, I've started a 40 day Bible devotional. It's actually on my phone as an app and it makes it fairly easy.