Happy Easter!

Over here at the Campbell household, we're all very glad that it's Eastertime! We had a great Easter yesterday. Since David went to the Easter Vigil mass on Saturday, he planned to stay at home on Sunday morning and catch up on his rest. I could have left the boys home with him and gone to Easter mass by myself, but both David and I really felt like of all masses of the year, the boys should not miss out on Easter mass. So I was thinking about my options and decided to give Kim a call to see if she and Michael might be going to mass on Sunday morning (I knew she would be at their Easter Vigil also, but I figured it couldn't hurt to ask!). It turned out that Kim did have to be at church on Sunday morning, so I decided to take the boys on a mass field trip to Aunt Wheetah's church yesterday morning. It was great! The boys were as well behaved as I've ever seen them (Thomas cried a few times but spent the majority of the mass in the pew), it was great to celebrate Easter mass with Kim and baby Michael-in-utero, and everything about the mass was beautiful.

While I was gone with the boys, David fixed us a delicious brunch back home. After brunch, we headed off to an Easter egg hunt and potluck with some people from church, and that went very well. Jack and Thomas got a kick out of finding the hidden eggs (and sampling the candy inside, of course). The highlight of the potluck, though, was probably the baby goats that we got to see while we were there -- They were a week old (and looked just like this picture) and were very cute! The couple that hosted the egg hunt is planning to buy 2 goat kids, so they had the lady who is selling them come by with the mom goat and 4 kids so they could choose which 2 they wanted to buy.

After the egg hunt (which obliterated nap and quiet time, yeow!), we got home and tried our best to keep the boys from self-destructing until bedtime. They had a great day, but were exhausted, cranky, and whiny by the end of it.

Today was Aftermath Monday, so I tried to get through the day with as much sanity intact as possible, but it's been rough. It always seems to take a few days for the boys to settle back into a normal routine after a Big Event, so I fully expect the first part of this week to be full of extra whining, crying, temper tantrums, etc. but I do hope tomorrow is a little easier. I find that my tolerance of the kids' misbehavior is decreasing as my tummy size increases -- I'm trying to be patient, but when Peter is squirming and doing crazy acrobatics inside, Thomas is grabbing at my leg and demanding over and over again "Help, PEAS!" or "All done, PEAS!" and then 2 milliseconds later "No all done, PEAS!" and Jack is saying "I want ____!" (after the millionith reminder to ask for things politely) or "I can't do ____ because my legs/arms/toes/you-name-it won't work", I feel like I'm going to lose what's left of my mind :). It's like there's not enough of me to go around. What was Bilbo Baggins' line in The Lord of the Rings -- something like "I feel thin, like butter spread over too much toast". I hear that. But, I have no doubt that these times are good for my soul, and when I have nothing left to give that's when I'm closest to Christ. It's my job to raise my kids to be disciples of Christ, but that process is a journey for me also, and I know I have my own, made-just-for-Kathy crosses that I'll have to carry along the way as I become a better discipl also. But boy, it can be HARD sometimes!

In other less profound (but exciting!) news, I made my own yogurt today!! I got the recipe last week and tried it out today, and it worked! Yogurt making might not rate too high on some people's excitement scale (I think David might have been underwhelmed), but we go through a lot of yogurt here. The boys love it plain, with berries, with granola, in smoothies, in popsicles, etc. and I like it, too. It's good for us, especially since I buy just the plain, no sweeteners or additives kind. But, it's expensive! I think it's about $3 for a quart of yogurt, and I usually buy about 2 quarts a week. Now I can make my own, for half as much! Milk is about $3 a gallon, and a gallon of milk will make about 2 quarts of yogurt. Now, if I can keep my pumpkin, watermelon, tomato, cucumber, and herb plants alive and healthy for a while, maybe I can actually see my grocery bill start to go down a little. God help us when we're feeding 3 teenage boys!!