A Happy Easter

We had a very happy Easter on a glorious spring day! All the little cousins were together (the 3 "big boy" cousins were absent, as was Ava, but only because she lives in CA).

I love how much the cousins love each other! They are so joyous when they are reunited! Whooping, and laughing, and running, and playing, and not wasting a second of their time together. It's wonderful. Teagan watched them departing at the end of the day with tears in her eyes says, "I don't want the cousins to go! I want them to stay! Why are they all leaving at the same time?" Heart break.

How cute are these two?!?

These beautiful girls can hold their own against all those boy cousins!

Along came Peter Cottontail!

Hello Cousin!

But in between the arrivals and departures, there was the joy! And not just for the cousins, but for all the siblings. And spouses. Another thing I love is that all the "in-laws" get along so well. I glanced up during the meal prayer to see all the guys holding hands or having their arms slung about each other's shoulders. They aren't just "in-laws"--they're friends.

We had a fabulous day full of  warm sunshine, fine food, laughter, and fun...and eggs!

A basket of eggs!!! Cool!!!

Sooo...what do I with them??

Hunt them of course!!!

First you fill a couple hundred eggs...

Then you hide them anywhere you can...and set the kids lose:

Did anyone besides Dante find any eggs you ask? Well, just a few....

Lately when you tell Teag to smile, you get a smile like this. :-)

Then the carnage begins: cracking open those eggs~finding toys, candy, money! Fun, fun, fun!

Teagan, who has no idea what money is, got the one and only $5 egg.

Did the kids have a good time? If Cooper is any proof, then, yes, I think they did:

This was under the vest:

As for Teagan, she ate nothing but bacon and chocolate all day! That's a great day, in any book! After cracking open the eggs, it was time to hang out some more, eat some more fabulous food, watch the kids play, and maybe do some playing ourselves...or just kick back and enjoy the sun!

A good nap and a cuddle with Papa Tom or Gramma Sue was how Teagan spent part of the afternoon...despite cousins running about and grown ups laughing and talking all around her. Those must have been good snuggles!!

I feel so very blessed to be part of this large, happy group of family and friends! Hope everyone was blessed to have even a fraction as happy a holiday as we did!

And in the midst of it all, may we always remember the true reason behind the joy and celebration of this:

Three Crosses on a Hill...

And One Gloriously Empty Tomb...

For Our Lord is Risen!

The Food List Challenge

So, I guess this has been going around Facebook for several months now but I just heard about it today. I didn't want to use the app on FB and was grateful to find the list on another blog. Apparently, the initial prediction says that of the 100 foods on this list, most people would have only tried about 20 (or less) of them before they die.

So, here is the list:

(click on the list to see it enlarged)

I was happy learn that I've tried 66 of them! But does this mean I'm going to die soon or just that those other people that have 20 or less on their lists lead slightly more boring lives than I?


Here is my list:

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
And there you have it!

Angst

I am 41 years old, and after this afternoon, I am of the belief that I have never actually been in love.

Today we took Van (7) and Teagan (3) to McDonalds. Not the restaurant one typically associates with romance, but this afternoon, love blossomed there. In the play structure of all places. Actually it was prior to that. It was what the French refer to as the lightning bolt: love at first sight.

When we arrived, even before we ordered, Van saw through the window into the play room a little strawberry-blond girl. (Hello, Charlie Brown and the little red-headed girl!) And, walla! The lightning bolt!

We ate at the table next to her (and her mom and younger brother). Van leaned over to Gramma and whispered, "I like her!" He ate as quickly as possible so that when she was finished eating, so was he. And they both bounded over to the play structure together. They spent the next 30-40 minutes gleefully playing together.

(Teagan decide the place structure was scary and instead spent her time running to and fro between the tables with babies, saying hello, asking to "pet" them, and coming back to us to tell us how cute they were.)

Van and the strawberry-blonde, and her brother Jack, ran and played. But soon it was time for them leave. This coincided with Teagan and I going up to order coffee (for Auntie M who was dying for some) and cookies for the kids. Van whistfully watched them leave, wanting to leave at the same time, but agreeing to stay to eat a cookie.

When we returned to our house, Van was very emotional. Crying easily (like at the drop of a hat), like when Teagan told him he wasn't playing Monkeys the right way or at many other little incidents that ordinarily he would have brushed off. Initially, I thought he was tired and that he was probably bored with playing with a 3 year old, as he has spent the week at Teagan's since he is on Spring Break from school.

I then asked him if he would like to go play upstairs and if he would like me to come. When we entered the play room, he sat on a stool and began to tell me his troubles.

You see: he really, really liked that girl from McDonalds...and now *big sigh & tears welling up* he was never going to see her again! He didn't even know her name or where she went to school! He didn't know where she lived! (Tears overflow.) He knows her brother's name is Jack. He knows she is 6. He knows that she has an older brother the same age as his older brother....

If only I (Auntie M) hadn't needed coffee, we could have left at the same time and followed them home, so we could know where she lived and asked her her name! (Hello, little stalker in the making!) And this is why he is so sad. Because he has a friend he can never find again.

I kept a straight face and said that, yes, this was very sad. I did point out that this is why it's important to ask people their names (he used to be very good at doing this). And I said that it would be better in the future to ask a friend for her name and where she goes to school and that following them home perhaps isn't the best way to get to know to know people.

But then I went on to explain that while this was indeed very sad, this is something happens often in life: he will see as he gets older that he will meet people and either know them for a short time or a long time and then perhaps lose touch. Sometimes we never see them again...sometimes we will find them again in the most surprising places. And I told him of a childhood friend that moved away when I was 8 and I met again in a different country when we were both going to school there when we were 19 years old~11 years later! And the other dear friend I'd had and how we both moved when we were 10 and then slowly lost touch with eachother. But we found each other 30 years later on Facebook.

This did not help: "But you knew their names!" he wailed. "Why didn't I ask her name?!?"

I tried to comfort him with the idea that she must live somewhere near that McDonalds and that, since we too live near that McDonalds, maybe we would run into each other again. His logic won out again: "But we won't always be there at the same time--it may never happen again!"

So then I told him that he would simply have to savor the good memories he has of her. "What's a memory?" I explained what it was. And then told him that even though my grandmother is dead, and I can't see her anymore, I have many memories of her and because of those memories, she is always close to my heart and how happy that makes me.

His response? "I can't remember anything good..." I interupted him, asking him about the happy memories of sitting up in the play structure laughing and talking or running and laughing together?

Again, "I don't have any good memories in my mind, I only have sad music playing in my head...."

At this point I nearly died laughing~sad music playing his head????? Seriously???? He's SEVEN years old!!!! OMG!!!

Trying to reach him once again, on a 7-year-old level, I suggested reading a wonderful book called Amos and Borris. This is the story of Amos the mouse and Boris the whale: a devoted pair of friends with nothing at all in common, except good hearts and a willingness to help their fellow mammal. They meet after Amos sets out to sail the sea and finds himself in extreme need of rescue. They part ways after Borris rescues Amos thinking they will never meet again. But then there comes a day, long after Boris has gone back to a life at sea and Amos has gone back to life on dry land, when the tiny mouse must find a way to rescue the great whale.

I had only reached the part where they first meet and become friends, when he stopped me and said he couldn't take it, it was too sad, a whale and mouse could never be friends because one lives on land and one lives in the ocean, and with a sigh, he told me he was going back downstairs to Gramma. When I asked him what I should do, he listlessly told me I could stay there or come downstairs, it didn't matter. The kid was seriously lovesick!!!!!


So I followed him downstairs and we told Gramma the real reason he was so meloncholy. He then told her, in a pitiful voice, "We had soooo much in common!" (For instance, they both had older brothers who were 19 years old and neither one of them knew when their brother's birthdays were--you know, important stuff like that!)

He sat on Gramma's lap, morose, while Teagan patted his arm and told him that it would be okay, really it would--but could we puh-lease play monkeys now????

I sat back and silently laughed and then solomnly mused that I don't think I've ever been as love-lorn in my whole life as Van was today.

Play Monkeys with Me?

We had a fun couple of days this week with our TeaRose....

Extra Large, Extra Juicy, Extra Ripe Strawberries!! Yum!!!

Teagan  is loving helping out in the kitchen!

She created a new game with some stuffed animals. So for the past 2 playtimes, it's been, "Play Monkeys with Me?!?"

This game absolutely cracks her up!!! She plays with the brown Baby Monkey while Gramma (or Auntie M) is the pink monkey, Pinky. Then Teagan calls Pinky by the wrong name and Pinky gets upset and Teagan dies of laughter!!!

I love her laugh!!! Infectious!!

When she wasn't making Pinky hoppin' mad, she played with all sorts of animals in her own little house...

Or cuddled with us...and of course her sweet tooth had to be satisfied with a sugar-free popcycle.

Yesterday I was having a bad flare up and spent most of the day curled up in pain watching Gramma and Teagan play Monkeys. As a side note, how freakin' cute is her outfit? Rather French~Moulan Rouge, yes?

But Teagan also played the flute off and on. One of those times is when I fell asleep.

I woke up to hear Teag saying, "It's not working Gramma! She's still asleep!" When I opened my eyes, there was Teagan with a flute, that she had apparently been playing in hopes of waking me from a deep sleep!

I had to laugh! Also what first came to mind was Lottie from Enchanted April: "I always thought of myself as a flutey sort of person..."

Teagan wakes up every morning and no matter what the weather, pronounces it to be a beautiful day! Yesterday, she looked out the window and wondered when it would stop raining...and of course then the sun came out! Little sunshine girl!

Later, when Teagan asked me if I was feeling better and I said no, she helped Gramma get hot packs for my back and neck and then wrapped her very own special blankie, Purple, around me. And then kissed me and cuddled me. It helped a lot! Heavier pain meds would have really helped but then I would have had to go to bed and missed Teagan's visit altogether. In the long run, the pain was worth it.

She is a sweet little blessing to us all...but yesterday, I felt especially blessed!