Prospera Pascha sit!

At long last, here is an Easter post, otherwise known as, a series of adorable pictures of Adele.
She is my queen of hearts lately; I can't stop staring at her little face. I think it's the age, or the fact she's the baby of the family, or her capacity to wear the heck out of her adorable spring dresses. Case in point: Easter!

But M. continues charming and savant as always. This morning I said to Adele, "Adele! Why are you so beautiful?" And Miles put in, "Mum, why are YOU so beautiful?" You can't not kiss that boy.

I would really love to have a bunch of still life pictures of the church service, perhaps of the sunrise, an early daffodil, and some meditations on the resurrection. But I am tired, today, and with small children, life is rarely still.

We attended the 6am service, as has become customary. Although, I was completely certain that it started at 6:30 until about 5:40 when we checked the website again... The kids have never been dressed so quickly nor so thoroughly against their will. Fortunately, I thought to buy some donuts to use as breakfast bribes rewards. We got to church only a few minutes late and, more amazingly still, no one was crying.

We missed the outside dawn fire portion of the service, but as it was drizzling pretty thickly, I'm fairly sure that's for the best, this year. We did get more cooperation out of Miles in the children's pageant, though. Our dawn service includes a play put on by the children and youth that presents a tableau of redemption-themed stories from the Old Testament, done by candlelight, before sunup when we proclaim the risen Christ. It's pretty amazing. Anyway, this year Miles brought the stuffed Walrus to be created in the Creation Story and to be saved from the flood in the Noah story, and there was absolutely no crying or falling limp to the ground like last year. Progress.

We enjoyed a fabulous brunch at church after the service, and were home by about 9:30. That's right, at 9:30, we were home from church on Easter Sunday. More hours for celebration! which we did in our home, since it was pleased to RAIN all day.

The good news was, the kids got to give their full attention to their baskets and eat more candy than they might have done had we been less sluggish and lazy :-)

Baskets were pretty simple, but the kids thought they had riches. Among the wealth was M.'s first jump rope, a new hat for Adele, who loves hats, and some of those eggs are sidewalk chalk.

The windup toys were a big hit!

Easter gave us lots of quality time with family. Michaela and Marshall joined Grandma and Grandpa and we had a happy, festive and crowded living room for Easter :-)

Miles got a new audience for his stories.

Adele got more Adoring Tall People to read to her!

Miles got to harmonica for far longer than usual before being asked to stop.

Adele got to be the Beloved Happy Sprite of the room... actually, that's the normal state of things.

Often when you hold a child, you do so in hope that some of their beauty will rub off on you. Whether this means they actually make you look better, or whether it means some Ineffable Glow will get into your bloodstream and make your heart lighter, I'm not sure if we know. I just know I can't stop marveling these days.

Even as I reach for another cup of coffee, because she's still not sleeping through the night (by a long shot). I'm in a bittersweet place, where I know that on the one hand, someday, we will sleep! and do things in the evenings! but also, someday, she won't be 16 months old and wearing tiny sundresses, and someday, he won't want me to look at and hear all about his 27th drawing of a rocket going to space.. Someday can wait. On balance.