happy easter

Our Easter weekend passed blissfully. Somehow, I feel today as if I had a week off, instead of just a long weekend. I LOVE that.

I was so refreshed this weekend by so many details. Dyeing eggs with the boys on Friday (and the feeling of HAVING time to dye eggs). Our last date swap night with our dear friends, who move to Maine next week, marking the closing of a long and lovely season in our lives. An unexpected phone call on Friday from my missioner friend Ellen...I haven't seen her in nearly 11 years (since my wedding) and haven't talked to her in 5?6?, and she lives in India so we may not talk again for some time. But we had time to talk meaingfully, and to pray, and it was so refreshing to speak to an old friend, to connect, and to encourage her in her work. Lunch with Val Friday. Out with the family Saturday. Bread making. Tart making. The preparation of our Greek-inspired Easter meal (oh, it was so delicious). The realization that after all these years, Jason and I finally share a "hobby" (of the ordinary kind, not the bringing-kids-to-Mexico kind, or the sure-we'll-be-a-foster-parent kind, or yes-let's-adopt kind). We are SO into cooking lately, and enjoying the newest experiments (lentil soups and gourmet pizzas and vegetables whose names I can't always pronounce). Oh, and laundry soap making--I made my first batch of homemade laundry soap this weekend! An inspiring sermon at Val's church yesterday. And such a fun, fun time with Mom, and DD, and friends at our house yesterday around an Easter meal. Yay for a new and emerging community of friends here in Lynn, even as old friends move on to other ministries and lives.

And in really big news...we welcomed a new member to our family on Saturday. Orilus' long-anticipated most-wished-for birthday gift, a yellow parakeet he's named Flash. Flash--because he's yellow (like a flash of lightning) and because he escaped us when we tried to put him in the cage and "flew like a flash" around his room for quite a while. Orilus was quite excited to have a pet to show off yesterday...and Jackson's talking about getting one himself to add ("Flash looks lonely," he told me yesterday). Oh, my.