Celebrate

Today, I will celebrate that this is the last time I will write about the word celebrate.

I will celebrate that there is one week left of Lent. We will celebrate Easter next week.

We had our Palm Sunday Brunch and Youth Auction this morning. People were excited to celebrate winning baked goodies and lots of other fun items.

We are watching Formula 1 racing again, which for us is reason to celebrate. 

MSU is in the Final Four, if you're a fan, that's a good reason to celebrate.

The weather is still cold, so we're having a fire in the fireplace to celebrate.

Wait, that's not right. We're not celebrating the cold weather. We are ready for it to warm back up to average temperatures. Then we can celebrate.

Deviled Benedict's

My mom gave me this egg plate for Christmas. This plate was a great gift. Although it does sort of seem out of place, until you know the whole story.

Mom came to visit GR a week before Christmas. We went to Meijer Gardens. As we walked through the building, admiring the many Christmas trees from around the world, we noticed an egg theme on many of the trees. It seems that the tradition of using decorated eggs is not just for Easter!

I do enjoy deviled eggs, I also love snow (I can say that again after last winter), snowflakes, snowmen, etc. All these things combined and now you can see why this is a great gift.

I was catching up on some dvr'd shows (Giada At Home), and she made some Eggs Benedict Deviled Eggs (you can find the recipe here). I thought: well, we have some ham, eggs, panko, and I have this new egg plate. I had to make them.

I'm calling them Deviled Benedict's and no, there aren't any left. They made a great lunch. If you ever want to make a twist on deviled eggs, I highly recommend this recipe. It may be my new Christmas tradition.

Easter Sunday and Bill's birthday

8:15am church service, Sunday brunch up at the "center", golf cart driving (aka terrorizing senior citizens on the golf course, we may have been going the wrong way, that is still tbd), cribbage, euchre, pasta salad, hot wing chicken dip, and "the" birthday cake. 

All in all it was a good day. Happy Birthday to my best friend!

Happy Easter!

Here's is an Easter Haiku for you:

May your day be filled

with sun, flowers and smiles
and with peace and joy.

A Lent filled with preparation

Advent is all about preparing.

Today felt sort of like Advent.

After meeting 4/5 of the Robinson family (Leslie, Chris, Olivia and Grant) we had to run to the store. Bill left his suit hanging on the back of our bedroom door. Mom and Dad had gone to the grocery store.

I frosted the white buttermilk cake with buttercream frosting and topped it with shredded coconut. I cannot wait to eat a piece of this cake.

Then I made the au gratin potatoes for tomorrow's dinner.

Finally, I assembled the breakfast casserole. That is going to the church in the morning (I know, why else is it called "breakfast" and I used my least favorite word). There will be breakfast after the Sunrise Service, we'll be attending breakfast but not the service. We will all go to the 10am service.

Mom made a carrot and gelatin mold dish... It's orange. I don't eat it.

She also "stuffed" the eggs for the hunt, boiled the eggs for the devil (well, they're called Deviled eggs) and I created a Scavenger Hunt to hide a gift for Cyndi.

See? That was all a lot of preparation for Easter.

We also stopped by the hospital. Uncle Bill got to hold Spencer for the first time. Both did really well!

The four of us went to dinner.

Then Leah stopped by on her way to her mom's. Her birthday is tomorrow. She had two over-tired, active yet still cute children with her; Logan and Eliza.

But now we wait. It's almost over. Tomorrow the Son will rise.

Easter Weekend in Indy

After the week with Skylar here, I took her back home. Bill met us there, he had to come by way of Cleveland (no, it's not on the way, that's my point). On Saturday Grandma, Grandpa, Uncle Bill and I took Skylar to the Children's Museum. We wanted to see the Lego Castle exhibit.

Here are some of the Lego pieces that were on display.

Bill didn't want to be in the picture, but I told him he had to for scale. That was a life-size Lego statue of a suit of armor. Pretty impressive.


I love castles, and have had several castle calendars in the past. This is one of the more famous castle's in Germany built by Ludwig, the Neuschwanstein Castle. (click here to see the website.) The display had a wheel that let you spin the castle so you could view it from any side.

Bill found this dinosaur...

then he crawled into the submarine (different exhibits for those of you who have never been to the Children's Museum) and surprised Skylar!

This dinosaur (and two others that didn't make it into the photo) are crashing through the side of the building!

Easter Sunday

A cute little lamb cake.

Eggs that Skylar helped me color.

My artistic interpretation of the eggs after I peeled them to make egg salad.