Our Easter Weekend

All last week Keith was out of town. By the time we hit Friday, I was exhausted. Not only was I a single mom for a week, but I'm still recovering from my surgery. I had an allergic reaction to something and my abdomen was covered in a rash. It's finally fading, but I had a few rough days last week where I was moments away from completely removing my skin via my fingernails.

Keith got home around 7pm on Friday and thankfully one of the first things he did was take the boys outside to play for an hour or so before bedtime. I needed that time of quiet and the boys needed that time with Daddy. I finally got a good night's sleep since he was home too. I'm not a big fan of those nights by myself. Saturday was a pretty busy day. Keith tackled all the laundry that I had washed and dried but hadn't folded or put away (I'm bad about doing that...) And I vacuumed and then worked most of the day in the kitchen.

We signed up to help do breakfast for our Sunday School class on Easter, so I baked 2 and a half dozen blueberry muffins. I also peeled and cut-up about 10 potatoes for our Easter lunch mashed potatoes. I made yeast rolls from scratch (my first time to ever do that!) And I made a pan of chocolate chip cookie bars. I didn't realize how much time all of that would take, not to mention how hot my kitchen would get with the oven on long enough to bake everything.

On Saturday evening, I checked everyone's clothes to be sure nothing needed ironing and it was all laid out and ready to go. When I got around to checking on my clothes, I discovered that the security tag was still on the pants I had planned to wear!! After spending some time Googling, my awesome husband finally just chopped off half of the tag, tore the other half apart, and somehow managed to get the tag off of my pants without ripping a huge hole in them. Then I had to iron them because they were all wrinkled from the handling they had to go through.

On Easter Sunday, I woke up feeling very off. I couldn't really pin-point what was wrong, but I did feel very lightheaded and had to sit and/or lay down for awhile. I ended up having to throw up (sorry I didn't warn you!). I'm not really sure what was up with that. I kind of wonder if it didn't have something to do with the cajun fried fish we had for supper. Maybe my gallbladder-less digestive system wasn't up for the challenge. But once everything was out of my system, I felt great. I haven't had anything quite like that happen before because I normally still feel pretty bad after getting sick like that, so it was just strange. We somehow still managed to get everyone dressed and out the door on-time for church, not to mention getting food in the crockpot so there would be minimal prep-work required when we got home. I guess I'm thankful that the boys woke us up at 6:30 that morning so everything was able to be accomplished and still get us to church on-time.

Church was phenomenal. Our pastor did a type of a monologue where he was Peter and talking about what he saw and what happened to him on the day that Jesus was crucified. It was really neat. Plus we watched this video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn94B3GHcjY Very powerful! And I have to say that I like it when the auditorium is dark except for a spotlight on stage. My child behaves much better in the dark than he does when the lights are on. I have no idea why, but it was nice to just be able to listen rather than constantly telling Garrett to be quiet or to stop driving his cars on the back of the pew or get up off the floor or whatever else he might be trying to do.

We got home from church and lunch was on the table within 20 minutes! If we're going to eat lunch at home on Sundays, then this is the way to do it! I had bought a pre-cooked ham and put it in the crock-pot to warm before we left for church. The potatoes that I had peeled and chopped, had been sitting in the fridge overnight. Before church, I put them in a different crockpot and once we got home, they were ready for mashing. I popped the yeast rolls in the oven for warming and heated up corn and we were ready to eat!

After lunch, we gave the boys their Easter baskets. Garrett got an IronMan, the movie Happy Feet, a little stuffed Super Mario (he loves him!), and some candy. Cooper got the dinosaur from Toy Story that is also a flashlight-when you squeeze his tail, the mouth opens up and light shines and the dinosaur roars. He also got a stuffed Mickey Mouse, a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse DVD, and candy. The rest of the day was spent just hanging out and resting. Keith and I each called our parents to wish them a Happy Easter and we watched both of the boys' new movies. We went to Dairy Queen and got some icecream and then had leftovers for supper. A very great day. We had some good discussions with Garrett about what Easter really means with Jesus dying on the cross and then coming back to life. It turned out to be a really great day.