Easter/Birthday Recap

As I sit here posting these pics, I am eating one of my sister’s amazing homemade Dark Chocolate with Chocolate Chip Cupcakes topped with a Bailey’s Irish Cream Chocolate Ganache, finished off with a Pouf of Meringue Buttercream. I don’t know quite how I typed all that. In one word though: DELICIOUS!

Easter this year happened to fall on my 27th birthday. If you do the math, you can see Jay and I tied the knot at a pretty young age….

So for 2009, I got the double treat of having all our in-town family join us for not just Easter but also some birthday fun on Sunday. Hence the aforementioned Dark Chocolate Decadence.  The day was made ten times sweeter because most everything for our feast was brought to us, not provided by us. We are very grateful for everyone’s kindness and generosity. Thanks to all of you!

So here’s a quick summary of the day:

For something new this year, we attempted to make Easter Tomb Cookies.  I say attempted because yours truly sort of missed a critical step early in the process which flubbed up the recipe bigtime.  And caused me to actually shed tears…tears!!!! over egg whites that would not whip properly on the eve of my birthday. Silly, I know.

Maybe I was just a little sad over finally turning 27. But I think it was more due to the fact that I felt so frustrated because there was not time enough left in the evening for us to assemble another batch of the cookies before bedtime. So I did what any control freak would do under the circumstances: just as soon as the kids were in bed, I made a second recipe!! My children WOULD be able to open the oven door on Easter morning to properly-made tomb cookies!

After church, we attempted to take some Easter photos. These sessions are always so sanctifying; usually even more so than the wonderful Easter sermon! You get shots where the big sister is trying to no avail to tell her brothers to knock off the foolishness so that they can please go eat lunch sometime today, and preferably before the Easter supper is ready to be served:

and others like this where for whatever reason the child thinks jumping up and down and flapping his arms will enhance the clarity of the final shot:

and then endless goofiness from the littlest meatball of the bunch (my Pa always used the term “meatball” and I still love it!):

but if you’re lucky, you might end up with a pretty nice, if not perfect picture of your four beloved children.

Remember when they looked like this (Josey’s first Easter, and please note that Abigail is wearing the same dress)?

She is the easiest one to snap photos of, so I took a few more of her, sweet thing.

Then mid-afternoon, cousins and aunts and uncles and grammys and grandys, and a sweet friend all arrived!! There was much drinking and feasting and playing, and the traditional egg hunt was held on the grounds.  Fierce competitors these ones:

Whose child is that wacky little guy on the end?