Holiday activities

As many of you know, Mr. Handsome enjoys painting. In general, he likes activities that allow him to work with his hands and use his creative and artistic gifts. Over the weekend, he and Little Buddy sat down for a full hour to make valentines. Little Buddy loved it, and Mr. Handsome got into it, too. They made a few varieties, including the one above.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Today’s post is about Easter Dinner. We are about three months late, but better late than never, right?

Before this year, Mr. Handsome and I had never hosted a family holiday dinner. We have hosted friends for holiday dinners, but never family. So this year for Easter, we had my brother-in-law and sister-in-law over for a big meal.

So much work goes into hosting a dinner, especially when it’s a holiday dinner. You want everything to be perfect. We got home from church and spent the entire afternoon cooking. My sister-in-law suggested we eat lamb to represent Christ’s sacrifice. Lamb on Easter isn’t a tradition that either Mr. Handsome or I held growing up, but I know some families do.

Mr. Handsome cooked a leg of lamb on the smoker, and I made most of the side dishes. We did spinach strawberry salad with lemon honey vinaigrette, sweet buns, roasted asparagus, and smoked potatoes. It all went very well and was quite delicious, but we were both exhausted by the time our relatives arrived. I have new respect for the amount of work it took my mom to make holiday dinners growing up. She was usually the one hosting.

What was the first holiday dinner you hosted? What do you eat on Easter?

The title pretty much sums up this post. Are any of my readers right there with me? With a toddler and a newborn, the best gift I can give myself this holiday season is sleep. We made homemade, deep dish pizza (one of Mr. Handsome’s family traditions….more on that in a later post) and drank sparkling grape juice before putting Little Buddy to bed. Then I fed the baby while we watched two episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show (Mr. Handsome loves that show, and it was his night to choose what to watch) and called it a night. Mr. Handsome stayed up another hour to get the baby to sleep, but we were all in bed well before 11pm.

It was the earliest and quietest New Years Eve that either of us have had since early childhood, but it was a good one.

I am looking forward to sharing my birth story with all of you, although it was a harrowing experience, and it will take me a little time to put together the energy to relive and write the story. Stay tuned.

How did all of you spend New Years Eve?