Perfect Easter

For me, it was perfect.

We woke up early, AJ rushing downstairs to find the Bunny's treasures, and me whispering, "Wait! Wait for everyone!" behind him, as I watched the adults (Mom and Dad came up to stay with us) stumble into their pants and rub their eyes. Hee. The rest of us caught up and the kids marveled at all the CANDY. Admittedly, there wasn't as much as some years; the Bunny tried to restrain herself in light of all my Jamie Oliver talk. Pinwheels, a frisbee, a book or two, stickers, and Hex bugs rounded out their baskets.

But chocolate for breakfast is totally allowed on this one day of the year. (In fact, I was so lenient that KT ate chocolate all day. We'd find her trolling the plastic eggs looking for more treats, at various quiet times during the day. She used our busy kitchen duties to her full advantage and found a lot of times to sneak away.)

After that -- and seriously, no real breakfast -- we went back upstairs to get ready for 9:00 a.m. Mass. We did this last year, and pulled it off, so we thought we'd try it again. Easter miracles, indeed -- we made it with plenty of time to spare, no meltdowns, and found both parking and an empty pew into which no usher attempted to squeeze any more than the 6 of us. I was feeling guilty for the luxury of comfortable seating the whole time, but... eh. If the usher isn't aware that he could seat 2 more parishioners, Not Really My Problem. The kids were even well behaved.

We had two funny things happen during Mass. One was by our own kid. KT, at one point before Communion but after the readings I think, said aloud, "I weady to go home now." Clear as a bell. I don't think anyone heard her but the folks directly near us, but it had us giggling. And the second was during the Consecration. We had just sung, "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again!" when another baby on the other side of church shouted, "YAYYYY!" I mean, right in rhythm. The priest actually had to stop and calm his own giggles for that one. He smiled and said, "AY-MEN." It was awesome. Made the whole church happy.

I whispered to DH during Mass that I Wanted to Take Pictures afterwards, out in front under the cherry trees. Because he needs a preemptive warning, otherwise he'll rush off to the car toute de suite. I'm all for hanging around to see if there's anyone who wants to chat with us after we leave Mass (there never is) but he's OUT the door. Heh. It doesn't bother me (parking IS sort of difficult there) but think it's funny. Anyway, we took some pictures that, if I do say so myself, turned out beautifully. We found our cars and headed home where the front-yard egg hunt awaited.

Fast forward to the cooking. I had planned a simple but nice Easter dinner. Mom and I tottered around the kitchen from about 11:00 until we served at 3:30, but it was so nice. We were able to kind-of cook one thing at a time so it didn't feel rushed at all. AJ was oblivious, working on his new Word Search puzzle book. DH and my Dad did some work out in the yard, which I know tired them out. Maybe for them it wasn't exactly the Perfect, relaxing Easter Sunday, but still. (They were out of my kitchen, which was helpful. Thank you, dear hardworking men!) I was worried that since KT was so busy eating chocolate and hadn't napped, we'd have a meltdown right at serving time. Didn't happen. She managed just fine, ate lots of corn and ham, and didn't even break the Lenox plate I let her use. We ate:

Honey Baked Ham
Mashed Potatoes
Corn on the Cob
Sweet and Sour Green Beans
Deviled Eggs
Dinner Rolls (from frozen, are you kidding?)

and Strawberry Shortcake for dessert. Dinner was slow, and conversation lively. I like that. I don't like when holiday dinners are over in fifteen minutes, all that work gone with barely enough time to acknowledge it.

We cleaned. Again, it was enjoyable, and comforting, to stand there with my Mom washing, me hand-drying, playing with my wedding pretties. :) I love that we went ahead and used the good china and silver. I was inspired by the simple minded suburbanite to attempt to create some kind of little legacy for my kids. I hope it worked. Afterwards, we sat down with a glass of something to drink (white wine for me, Dr. Pepper for Mom), and after I put KT to bed -- At 6:30 p.m., another miracle -- we could just reflect on what a lovely day it had been.

I just wanted to record all that. A Major Holiday so stress-free and easy is truly a treasure I want to remember.