kick your knees up, back in time. (all the way back to Easter.)

Never need a reason, never need a rhyme (except I have a reason and a rhyme: I haven't blogged about this yet but I want to, so there), kick your knees up, step in time.

Mary Poppins, anyone?  No?  (One of my favorite movies of all time - the costumes! the sets! the choreography! Oh my!)

Anyway, I guess we can move on to the actual point of this post.  Easter!  Yes, it happened.  It turns out that the magistrates can't keep Jesus in the tomb, even if they can keep his people out of the churches on that day.  So, because of all the Covid weirdness, we got to worship and celebrate at home by ourselves.  But celebrate we did - and with celebration comes food, and lots of it.  (Eat that, quarantine.  Literally.)

But kicking our knees up a bit more, and heading back a little further in time, first came Good Friday.  I mention this because I kind of outdid myself on the spread, and want to show off the photos.  I am learning, bit by bit, to try to bring beauty and not just food to the table.  I am discovering how to feed all parts of my humans - bodies and souls - with food and beauty and celebration and joy.  What a gift it is to be human.

Corona in Bloom!  Pretty flowers to go with my pretty blue plates.

Here's a practical tip for making a cheeseboard look pretty: wad the meat.  Don't just lay it out all flat and stacked; wad it up and plop it down.  Sounds gross, looks great.

So, then, fast forwarding to Easter Sunday, I knew that because we didn't have church, I would have more time and energy to really Feast It Up.  So, for breakfast, I made Breakfast Bread (which is fantastic, and I'll share the recipe sometime) and cinnamon rolls (the recipe for which I should also share sometime), and Todd read the first page of the Ascension devotional he wrote for the forty days between Easter and Ascension - the days Jesus was back on earth, teaching and interacting with people before he was taken up to heaven.  Easter is actually only the beginning of so many things!

After breakfast, I whipped up some little bird's nest rice krispy treats.  My mom would sometimes make these for my birthday when I was a kid, and they're just so spring-y! I thought the kids would think they were cute.  Essentially, you make rice krispy treats using chow mein noodles, and you shape them into little nests, and fill them with jelly beans.  (Starburst jelly beans, if you know what's good for you.)

We watched a sermon together as a family, and sang some worship songs.  Such a sweet time.

Then it was time to pull together a cheeseboard for lunch.  Another pretty spread!  I wanted Friday night's to be a little darker and more savory, and Easter Sunday's to be lighter and sweeter and more spring-y.  Not sure if that came across, but I thought it was pretty!

While everyone else was napping, I filled and hid some Easter eggs.  Unfortunately, I ran out of candy partway through filling them, so I ransacked the allowance quarters and filled the rest with money.  (I am a good and now-broke mom.)  The kids hunted for eggs while the ham heated and the cheesy potatoes cooked.

...and then we ate dinner.  At this point, I hardly cared if the food was pretty.  I was FULL UP.  But what a fun day of feasting and sweets and wine and CELEBRATION!  Easter is The Day.  It sets the pace for how we celebrate everything else in our lives - it is our ceiling.  And, as Todd often says, "you cultivate what you celebrate," and I want to cultivate in our kids a deep connection with the story of the Resurrection, and the joy that comes with that.  So feed them full, give them treats, worship with them, and shower them with eggs full of candy and money before sending them to bed in a food coma.  That's my new Easter motto.

And that was our Easter!