Happy Easter Everyone!!

It was a busy weekend filled with traveling, family and cheer. It was also filled with church as it's the most important weekend of the year for Catholics and Christians alike. On Saturday night, I drove back from Joliet after having dinner with LL and her parents, so that I could attend mass at St. Alphonsus on Easter morning. Obviously more people go to mass on Easter, so I opted for the early 7:45 mass instead of one of the later masses. That was pretty smart on my part, but boy were there a ton of kids there! I figured they would all still be sleeping.

Easter mass is always uplifting with a strong and loud, very uplifting organ performance opening the service. It's in stark contrast to Good Friday's mass where we leave in silence.

For Easter, like Thanksgiving, my mom wraps a whole bunch of smaller presents (31 this time) ranging from flashlights and candy to socks and sunglasses. Everyone is allotted the same amount of play money and then we bid like fanatics on the gifts, even though we have no idea what's in the presents. After a trading flurry when the bidding was done, I ended up with a star shaped candy dish and cups with lids (like Starbucks cups). One of my gifts was traded to obtain various scented bathing gels (for LL) and my cherry, chocolate covered pretzels were traded for something as well. It's great fun.

The Easter egg hunt was a total disaster this year! I broke my cardinal rule of "always follow Sommer around" and while I was on my own she was getting assistance from everyone and her mother.....literally. As such I was dominated something 10 eggs to 4 and I finished in last of the four of us who competed. Ugh. I blame Sommer's blinking tennis shoes.