Today is Easter Sunday and it has been a beautiful day. The week leading up to it was pretty good too. Despite a brief relapse into winter on Wednesday, spring bounced right back. Things are budding out and greening up.
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| Blue glory-of-the-snow flowers on Wednesday morning. |
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| The same flowers this morning. |
Monday was the first day of Passover and, in keeping with our slightly untraditional tradition, we had our very Christian Seder dinner. We didn’t do a full Seder this year, just hit a few highlights and went straight to the food. We had apricot chicken, vegetable kugel, chicken matzah ball soup, potato latkes, haroset, hard-boiled eggs, horseradish, homemade grape juice, and, of course, matzahs. For dessert we had a very un-kosher pound cake with strawberries.
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| Our Passover dinner. |
We began our Spring Break on Thursday with a half day of school and we are off until Tuesday. Our spring break is always just a long weekend. They try not to give us too many vacation days so we can be out of school at the end of May. The weather was nice, so we spent our days off in a frenzy of outdoor activity. We built raised beds and planted strawberries. We planted onions. We brought the mower out of its winter hibernation and I mowed for the first time. There wasn’t any grass growing, I just mowed on low to grind up all the twigs, leaves, and pine cones on the lawn.
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| Planting strawberries. |
Josiah and I worked down at the barn for two days fixing the fences on the chicken and turkey yards. We did more than fix them, we redid them – moved them to new positions. There’s still more to do – pens to clean out, windows, doors to open for the warm season, and waterers to set up now that we don’t have to worry (too much) about ice. Josiah is a hard worker. I don’t know what I’d do without him.
During the week I kept my Easter traditions. I listened, as I do every year during Holy Week, to Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. It is a huge work, over two hours long, but I listened to it twice over several days. It is glorious music. Then yesterday evening I listened to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir performance of Handel’s Messiah that took place on Friday. (You can still listen to online at YouTube.com/MormonTabChoir through tomorrow night at midnight.) It was a wonderful performance. I only listened to parts one and two yesterday.
This morning I was up at dawn. The sunrise was lovely with golden light streaming through a clear sky. I sat in the brightening house and listened to part three of Messiah. It starts with “I know that my Redeemer liveth” and goes on through “Since by man came death”and “The trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised” and “Worthy is the Lamb” to the glorious “Amen.” It was a profoundly spiritual experience for me. I felt the power of the music and the words and the truth of it. As I listened I thought of the great morning of the resurrection when the dead shall be raised. And I thought of the joy of the reunions that will take place then when we meet each other again in our perfected and immortal bodies and behold the face of our Savior. My anticipation of that joy is almost overwhelming.
Today at church we sang two of my favorite hymns, the great Easter hymns, Christ the Lord is Risen Today and He Is Risen. I wait all year for the Sunday we get to sing those hymns. Our Easter service was good. We have a new senior missionary couple assigned to come down and be with us on Sundays. They spoke today.
We don’t do much in the way of Easter baskets at our house. Even when all of our children were at home, our Easter baskets were pretty humble. With just Hannah and Josiah at home, they were even humbler – a quick arrangement of vegetable baskets, dish towels (no plastic grass allowed at our house), a Lego kit for Josiah, a new bracelet charm for Hannah. There was a little candy too. The candy selection was tailored to individual tastes. There were no marshmallow peeps or hollow milk chocolate rabbits here. The children got jellybeans, and Snickers miniatures, and Reese’s peanut butter eggs. Stacey got those cheap chocolate covered marshmallow eggs that she loves (I don't like them they - taste like Styrofoam to me). I got a bag of Jordan almonds.
After church we went to Kurt and Julie's for our Easter feast. We took pickled eggs and beets and zesty carrots. Kurt and Julie provided the ham, funeral potatoes, asparagus, deviled eggs, and rolls. It was all so delicious. We’re home now, but later this evening we’re going back to Shillig’s for dessert.
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| Pickled eggs and beets. |
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| Our Easter feast. |
I hope you had a joyous Easter.
