A Happy Easter Afterall

I woke up to the sound of The Boy’s footprints running through the house to check if The Easter Bunny had come during the night.  Since The Daddy Monkey was taking the kids to the grandparents’ house that morning, we had decided to do our Easter activities (baskets, egg hunt, dinner) when they returned. Big mistake.

I got out of bed to find The Boy fully dressed, which is quite unusual because he loves his pajamas so much that I often have to beg him to get dressed hours after he’s gotten up.  He was dressed, and had already tried to check the backyard for booty.  Good thing we are on lockdown in this house, and he can’t get outside without an adult.

I scrambled and got everything ready for the Easter Bunny’s arrival.  (However did The Boy get so attached to the idea of The Easter Bunny, anyway?)

We were off to a rough start.  But the kids loved their baskets, and I forgot to take a photo of them before they were ripped to shreds.  The egg hunt is always a Big Hit in our house, and this year I had two kids to hide eggs for! They had a great time eating chocolates and finding eggs.

After the egg hunt though, things went terribly wrong.  I could give you a play-by-play, but let me just sum it up this way: by one o’clock, the kids were so jacked up on fun, grandparents, and sugar, that one of them had thrown up and the other one had broken something very expensive.  I’ll let you guess which was which.  We decided to get a clean slate and let the Whole Family have a nap.  I started the ham, and we all laid down.

An hour later The Girl woke me up.  Still grouchy, I made my way to the kitchen and began preparing the rest of our meal.  I had about an hour of quiet, with just me and The Girl in the Kitchen, and I began to feel like myself again.

Meal preparation lately is a very stressful time for me.  Everyone is tired, hungry, grouchy, and clamoring for Mama’s attention.  It is not fun.  But preparing our Easter feast, it felt like years ago when I did not scramble through throwing together whatever was on the verge of going bad, and doing it as quickly as I could.  Yesterday I took my time and enjoyed it.  I remember when I used to cook fabulous meals like this just because it was the weekend.  My days of iron chef-ing are over.  Temporarily anyway.  But being un-rushed in the kitchen like that tempered my bad mood, and made me feel good.

Soon The Daddy Monkey and The Boy woke up, and we set the table with a while tablecloth, pink napkins, and lovely organic snapdragons from The Farm.

We headed outside for wine and smoked salmon while everything was baking.

After we had our salmon and played for a while, I went inside to carve the ham and get everything ready.  We ate outside, just as I wanted to, because I managed to finish painting the outdoor furniture the night before.

It was delicious!  The weather was glorious, the kids were happy, and we had a fantastic meal with a lovely bottle of pinot noir.  I managed to stick to my original menu, and I also made a green salad with fig dressing, and sweet potato wedges for the kids.  I’m glad I was able to salvage what could have been a pretty rotten day.  And even though the kids don’t understand or appreciate the effort that went into the Whole Day, The Daddy Monkey did and thanked me, which is nice.

“The most indispensible ingredient of all good home cooking: love for those you are cooking for.”

-Sophia Loren