Easter 2013

After Thanksgiving, Easter is probably my favorite holiday!  It's just wonderful celebrating the reason for our beliefs, being reminded of the grace that was given us, seeing spring literally bloom this time of year, and lastly (selfishly)....the candy.  Easter candy is by far the best of all holiday candies (Cadberry Mini-Eggs HELLO)!  Quite an array of reasons, right?  Well - we had a great Easter holiday weekend, starting with the Easter Egg Hunt at the kids' school, having Good Friday off and spending some much-needed fun time with the kids, church, and preparing and attending the Makres/Tyndell Greek Easter celebration!  In fact, I'll add Greek Easter to the list of reasons supporting Easter as a wonderful holiday - we really appreciated being invited and had a fantastic time with family on Sunday. 

So the Easter Egg hunt at school was fun stuff - just some egg hiding/finding with Tyndell's classmates (no - Silas did not participate for those wondering....) and then some snacks afterwards.  There were so many eggs in full view during the hunt on the playgroun that all the kids were being strategic about their picks, Tyndell included.  She would literally go pick her favorite colors, or find all the bug shaped eggs, or shake them to see if the prize sounded good before deciding whether to place in her basket.  School was closed on Friday - Good Friday - so I took the day off and decided to have some fun out with Silas and Tyndell.  Since it was still a little cold outside that morning, Tyndell and I painted pottery at a local place while Silas napped.  She painted a sushi plate with her and Silas on it - but I'm pretty sure she made herself look like a mermaid (b/c she wanted me to help her with the tail), and Silas a jellyfish.  I painted some measuring spoons (b/c I never have enough of them at home when cooking!).  It was fun stuff and I think Tyndell really enjoyed it - can't wait to pick up the pieces this week and see how they turned out.  I'm absolutely sure Tyndell's plate will be the envy of all artists everywhere.  Afterwards, we went up to the UNCC campus to walk around their gardens which I had heard were really fun.  It was so nice being outside in the sunshine and it's a pretty cool little garden - my favorite was the brambly Flying Dragon Orange tree!  On Saturday, Jeff and I took turns getting our overdue cars serviced so the kids could rest and be lazy at home and then in the afternoon, we started preparations for Greek Easter.  It was totally fun - Jeff took on the traditional egg dying process with onion skins and I made two types of Tsoureki - Greek Sweet Easter Bread with embedded eggs.  We enjoyed the day drinking wine, playing Greek music on Spotify, dancing, and hanging out in the kitchen.  I always enjoy lazy days in the kitchen where you can really appreciate the process and do things the old way that takes time.  The eggs came out beautiful - such a lovely color and it's so interesting that yellow onion skins can do that!  And I took four of them and placed them in the braided loaves before baking - the smell was fantastic - hints of cardemon, citrus, and sugar.  On Sunday, Jeff woke up and was feeling a little Eggs Benedict, so we put together an impromptu breakfast feast!  Neither of us had made it before so it was interesting and delicious how well it turned out.  Go Jeff! Then, we visited First Presbyterian Church in uptown (we are officially looking for a church and had been there before but didn't really want to judge a new church based on the Easter service so we just went back to First Presby - we also have the kids on their waiting list so it's good to make a few appearances here and there too haha).  When we got home, changed, fed Silas, and then went up to Hunterville for Greek Easter at Nick and Sarah's house!  It was so fun relaxing with the Makres clan, watching Nick make the lamb, eating feta and olives, and finally enjoying all the other foods - spanokopita, domaldes, the bread, asperagus, and baklava!  Mmmmm.  And I have to say - cousin Chris did the blessing for our meal and he rocked it out (and I quote Talladega Nights - "you made that grace your b*tch!" sorry folks, but it's too funny not to think of that sometimes).  It really was a lovely, heartfelt blessing, and wonderful hearing this from someone we adore so much.  The celebration ended with the famous red egg cracking game where you try to crack others' eggs with yours but not crack your own.  I failed miserably but it was so fun watching how serious everyone got about it.  Wonderful Easter with wonderful people all around.  We definitely missed my parents, Brandon, Drew, and Rhiannon over the weekend, but we will see them all soon hopefully!  Perks of living closer to family now...Hope everyone had a blessed BLESSED holiday!