Easter weekend, part 1

Can you believe that it's almost the end of April?  May is just around the corner.  This hasn't been a banner month for me posting anything, but as any of you with children may know, the end of the school year keeps people busy.  Projects and parties and stuff.

 

But that's not all.  There's also another - yes, another - consignment sale I'm participating in.  Thankfully, this is the last one.  All of the things that don't get sold this time around will be donated, so none of it is coming back to me.  Two good things, really.  Of course,  I feel like all I've done in the last four weeks is dig out old toys and clothes and tag them.  But in the middle of those four weeks was Easter.

 

This year, Monkey had a four day weekend for Easter.  And I found out back in December,  I think it was, that The Dead were going to be touring again and their first show (April 12th - Easter) was going to be in a city about 20 minutes from where my dad lives.  The planets were aligning just right for me to make a long weekend trip, both for me and for the grandparents.  And that's not all.

 

Back when I was a child, my dad took me to the Easter Sunrise service at Old Salem.  It's the longest running service in America (this year marked 273).  I don't remember much about it from when I was a child, but it's been on my heart for a couple of years now to try and go back.  Again, the opportunity of this year's four day weekend and my plan to go to the concert gave me a chance to go back to the service, as an adult.

 

I'm choosing not to go into any great detail, but suffice it to say it was moving.  We started out in front of the old Moravian church, then walked a few blocks to the cemetery called God's Acre, just as the sun was peeking over the horizon.  It's a very traditional service, having not changed much in the last 200 years.  Although it's much more crowded now and I did see a news camera there.

 

The service threatened to lose something for me when I saw the news there filming the walk to God's Acre, but I tried not to pay attention.  The sacredness of something seems lost when it's filmed for the local 6:00 news.  But as I stood on top of the hill, watched the sun rise and listened to the brass bands play rounds of old hymns, I found the sacredness.

 

Then I went home, warmed up (it was really cold that early in the morning!!) and went back to sleep while my dad and his wife took the kids to their Easter service.  A girl needs her sleep before going to a concert!

 

This is the first post in what will probably be a series of three or four about Easter weekend.  I have photos from our Easter egg hunt from that afternoon and a bunch from the concert.  I know the weekend is fast approaching so I may not get the next post until Monday, but I will soon, promise.

 

Oh, and my story for the writing contest is done.  I think.  I'll be posting part of that here in the next few days as well.  

 

Hope to see you back soon!

 

date night

Wow, it's been a busy few days, hasn't it?  First off, I don't have any neat anecdotal stories about the children.  They've been pretty typical kids this week, so nothing funny to blog about there.

 

Trey and I celebrated 9 years of marriage this week, though, and that's pretty big!  We had tickets to see Ray LaMontagne on Friday night, downtown.  Trey had the wonderful idea, at about noon on Friday, to get a hotel room and have a mini-vacation before he heads out of town.

 

Have you ever tried to be spontaneous with a 6 and almost-3 year old?   

 

We had a babysitter lined up already, which almost never happens for me.  Usually something comes up and the babysitter falls through.  Just my luck, right?  However, the idea of getting away with my husband, even for a night, is appealing enough to call my cousin to see if they could keep the kids overnight. 

 

Unfortunately, my cousin was gone fishing and his wife was alone with their two kids.  I'm certainly not going to ask her to take care of our two also.  I don't know how moms of four can do it.

 

So, I called two other friends to see if one could take Little Man and the other could take Monkey.  Let me just say, I have wonderful friends.  Our sudden imposition on their weekend plans allowed for us to have a night with just the two of us, for the first time since Little Man was born.  Sounds pretty selfish, now that I type it.  Needless to say, we are in debt to them.  I'm sure I'll have their children over for a sleepover sometime in the near future - although probably not at the same time.

 

I absolutely hated calling the babysitter and canceling on such short notice, but when I explained what we were trying to do and why, she was totally understanding.  I'll be calling her again soon to help out while Trey is gone.

 

I won't bore you with the details of our evening.  We went to dinner, relaxed and people watched.  The place where we ate had patio seating and it was just cool enough to enjoy it.  There are some interesting people that come to downtown on a Friday night.  The concert was great, although between every song - and I mean EVERY song - people were yelling and whistling and yelling out songs.  You know, that's fine sometimes - I've done it, too, if it's a particularly rocking song, but EVERY time?  That starts to cut in on others' enjoyment.  

 

All in all, it was a great evening out.  Something that we hope to do again before another three years is up.

 

in the beginning...

in the beginning, there was light.  

Ok, but in the beginning of this blog, there's me.  I'll be talking about my family in just a little while, but right now I'm sharing some of my interests.  I like reading, sometimes writing, painting, photography, scrapbooking, anything outdoorsy - hiking, rock-climbing, canoeing, camping, but most of that was before children.

Now, I like sleeping, quiet mornings with my coffee before everyone wakes up, evenings after the kids go to bed, sleeping, playing with the children, did I mention sleeping?  I'm not old, but I certainly feel like it sometimes.

Some of my dislikes are cleaning...  um, cleaning... OK, I really dislike cleaning.  I also don't like inconsiderate drivers.  Especially in the drop off line at school.  People in a hurry to get to work that think they have the right to cut in line or cut through the parking lot to get ahead.   I really don't like that.  If you're in that much of a hurry, leave home earlier.  It's a simple concept - why am I the only one that gets it?

Enough about me.  Now it's Trey's turn.  He likes to fly airplanes.  It's a hobby that pays well.  He also likes woodworking.  He's teaching himself to play guitar and he likes golf.  He likes to play XBox and Playstation 3.  He also likes to organize and sometimes clean, but the housecleaning usually falls to me because I'm the SAHM.  

The kids like just about everything, as kids normally do.  Monkey likes singing and dancing, coloring, reading - you know, all that fun stuff.

Little Man likes cars and balls.  He'll want to play just about every ball sport there is.  And he's good!  Even at 1, he was throwing balls with amazing accuracy and strength.  I'm only a little biased.  I also catch him looking at books a lot, even though he isn't reading yet.

I'm thinking that's all there is for now.  We've done our introductions, now it's on to our daily lives.

where do we go next....