It’s been a musical build-up to this Easter – the service on Thursday night, where the choir sang, and then the service on Friday night with the only musical accompaniment our little recorder group. We’ve all been practicing these songs for a few weeks now, and I think we sounded better than we’ve ever sounded – which is high praise for a group where most of us still dive for the fingering chart any time we see a sharp or flat in the music. It doesn’t help that some of us play other woodwind instruments where the fingering is almost, but not quite, the same as for the recorder. The clarinetist and I both find ourselves playing recorder fingerings on our woodwinds, and vice versa.

Easter began with two services at church – and since the choir had to sit up front on the alter behind the wall of lilies (aka the flowers of doom – and if you’ve ever had to sit close to lilies and smell them for more than about 30 seconds you know what I mean. Shudder), this meant we couldn’t exactly sneak out after singing at the second service. Ah well. But it did give us more time for Richard to lean over and pass me sacriligeous notes about the meaning of Easter (which had nothing whatsoever with the real meaning, and earned me a dirty look from the alto section, since they made me giggle). And it also gave us an opportunity to clear out all our miscellaneous candy in the house and bring it to the church to feed to small children and others, all so it would no longer be sitting there to tempt us.

After church, Richard and I eyed the clocks, and there was just enough time to meet my older sister and her family, and my parents, for a quick lunch at a local fast food place. There is a new Wendy’s in town, and while I usually try to avoid fast food in general these days, due to our goal of eating healthy, the allure of a chocolate frosty is sometimes too hard to resist.

Then it was home to change and grab the muffins I made Saturday night, before climbing back into the car and driving down to spend the rest of the day with Richard’s family for the traditional Easter dinner. I brought my latest pair of socks I’m knitting, because I figured there’d be lots of sitting and chatting time (I was right) and managed to get most of the first one done. Granted, I’ll likely rip it all out again because I think I want to make it on smaller needles and with fewer stitches in the round, but I’m getting to the point in my knitting where I really don’t mind the occasional need to frog a project, even if it’s the whole thing.

We talked and laughed and caught up on what’s going on in our lives. We marveled over how the ‘new’ puppy has grown. We ate roast lamb and pork and corn fritters and salad and potatoes and my muffins, which have just a hint of nutmeg that makes them sweet, and then for dessert there was a fruit sorbet and chocolate peanut butter pie. There were also chocolate eggs and silly stuffed animals and back at home Richard had his Cadbury eggs and I had my caramel eggs, and we drove home in the dark and the pouring rain and it was a very long but lovely day.