Better late than never... Easter!

Of all the holidays we've celebrated here, Easter felt the most "weird".  Not bad weird, just weird.  I have my three reasons I feel like this happened:

1.  We were so blessed to be surrounded by family for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and this holiday, we were not (we didn't expected anyone, of course).  
2.  I had no Easter supplies for decorating.  Not like I did much at home, but the stores didn't carry much and most of their stuff came in right before Easter.  I was able to get Aberly a small Easter basket to fill with a few goodies.
3.   I think it also had to do with the fact that for the first time in my life, I was in charge of Easter.  I've always had my mom or another family member take care of Easter.  Granted I did put together a little Easter basket for Aberly last year, but otherwise, we were at my parents' house along with Colin's family.  Someone else has always made me Easter breakfast or brunch.  Someone else has put on the Easter Egg hunt.  This year, I was in charge. 

With Easter falling during Spring Break here, there weren't as many people around, so we decided to just do Easter morning as a family together.  I put together a brunch menu of Tex-Mex Stratta, blueberry muffins (out of a box, I'll admit, but I needed to use it), and fruit salad.  It turned out pretty good, but comparing my meal to what my own mom or mother-in-law would do, it felt pretty paltry.  My mom makes an amazing coffee cake that was an Easter staple (well, a staple at pretty much any special breakfast) and my mother-in-law can pretty much make any amazing breakfast food.  I am building my experience. 

We were woken up around 6:30 hearing a sweet little voice in the living room saying "Want that one, want that one" over and over.  Aberly, who normally comes in to our room first when she wakes up, had decided to go out to the living room and spotted her basket perched up on the hutch.  So, we rolled out of bed, grabbed the camera, and took down her Easter basket.  We had let her know the day before that Easter was coming and that the Easter Bunny might bring her treats.  This may have played in to her decision to go to the living room that morning.  Her basket contained three eggs with candy, a new spray bottle for playing outside, a stretchy frog, and a toy drill.  Yes, a toy drill.  She always loves playing with them at all her friends' houses. 

After a quick shower and change, we were dressed for church at 8:30.  Since Friday is the holy day here, having a church service on Sunday for the official date of Easter was great.  It was a small service since many people were at work or had attended the 5:30 sunrise service (not something we would've made it to!).  Afterwards, with grumbling stomachs from only having a small breakfast, we headed right home to get the aforementioned brunch prepared.  We did end up sharing our brunch with our neighbor, Robert, who had just gotten back from his Spring Break trip and had no food in his house.  He was thrilled to have a warm meal and listening ears about his trip around Europe.

Aberly headed down for her nap while I did some clean up and then prepped the plastic Easter Eggs for the hunt I had organized with some of the other TAISM teacher families.  It wasn't much, just a get together on campus where we all brought an appetizer to share (we met at 4:00) and eggs to contribute to the hunt, but I got lots of thanks for the other families for putting something together so we could all have fun and let the kids have a real egg hunt.  It felt so nice to know my efforts were appreciated and mostly, it was just so nice to have a little celebration on Easter with friends since we weren't with family.  Our friends here are our extended "family" here!

Overall, Easter was a blessing and we were grateful to still get to celebrate our Savior's resurrection and rejoice in the hope we have in Him.