Easter Weekend 2021

Spring always gets me excited to see more people again after the usually more quiet winter season, but this event brought an even stronger sense of that for obvious reasons. It was so wonderful to watch the kids run and play while mingling and catching up with friends I hadn’t seen in way too long. It felt like a sign of good times to come!

Saturday passed in a leisurely fashion with family walks (which again, is reminding me so strongly of our days last year during lockdown). Since the project replacing our siding began, we’ve seemed to awoken a ton of wasps and carpenter bees, so David built some bee catchers with the girls to hang around the house.

He also started to teach Hailey how to drive the mower and though she barely weighs enough to keep it from turning off when she’s riding, she loved it! She did a good job and he’s hoping by mid-summer it can be her chore, full time.

We dyed Easter eggs with a $2.00 kit- did you know you can dye brown ones? They turned out really natural looking, like we used red cabbage dye, though we most definitely did not.

Saturday late afternoon, David and I got away for a date night. This is significant because I can’t tell you the last time it’s been just the two of us out for something and it felt quite crazy at first.

Our first stop was Wine Maestro. We sat at the bar, took the pinot noir challenge (which was a flight of wine in which you had to guess if each sampling was a pinot noir or not— did you know a pinot noir can be white?!).

From there we tried a new spot at Langtree called Scratch Kitchen, a Gastropub from the team at Ghostface Brewers. It was great! The atmosphere was lively, our server was also a mixologist and made a great cocktail, and the food was fresh. I clearly was craving healthy (sense the sarcasm) and went with their spicy fried chicken sandwich, which was crispy, fantastic, and SPICY. I like spicy, but this was beyond buffalo and tasted like it had been marinated in ghost pepper juice.

We were back home before 8:00, just the way I like a date night. It was so much fun to have a new experience and uninterrupted conversation. We’re definitely moving these back up on ye ol priority list.

Easter Sunday was a fun one. The girls bunked together the night before and were up bright and early to see if the Easter Bunny had come. He had! They shrieked with excitement and tore through the house searching for hidden eggs before settling down to look through their goodies while David and I sipped coffee.

After letting the kids enjoy some of the sugary treats, we took a family walk around the neighborhood then got home in time to tune into church. Elevation Church has an incredible online streaming experience. At the same time as the regular service, they put on a kids’ service on a different streaming channel. We put the girls upstairs for that one and they absolutely love it. Not the same as going in person, but a great option to have nonetheless.

After church we got moving. I had a Daily Harvest flatbread for the first time, which had a sweet potato crust and was really good. I’ll be ordering more flatbreads to try next time. I also made my seedy broccoli salad so it would have time to chill before dinner.

From there, we spent the entire afternoon outside. It was gorgeous! The kids used their new glitter chalk, which is super fun because outside glitter doesn’t bother me the way inside glitter does, but the GIANT bubbles proved to be the biggest hit. We played with them for over an hour- highly recommend!

We went on another family walk, rode some bikes, got in a leg day workout, then the girls convinced us to pull out the kayaks. The lake water is still freezing, but they did such a good job of staying out of it (for the most part…. Kaitlyn couldn’t resist trying a quick dip). It made me excited for the warm weather adventures to come!

After washing all the pollen off us (it’s serious right now and we’re all a little sneezy), we sat down to an Easter feast. David has become quite good at smoking pork ribs, so we ate those, broccoli salad, easy green beans, mac and cheese via Amy’s Kitchen (from frozen), and rolls.

We read another chapter in The Order of the Phoenix (only a few more to go!), then the girls begged to have another sleepover. Luckily we were all so worn out from the day that everyone crashed hard.

I hope you had a wonderful Easter if you celebrate and a fun, rejuvenating weekend. The sunshine is giving me LIFE, so I’m sending some your way. Have a great Monday!