New dish challenge

Just to make things different and interesting, I asked the sisters-in-law to bring a new dish they've been wanting to try for Easter dinner. My contribution was the Pioneer Woman's Pea Salad. It was ok but similar to the broccoli salad I make and apparently I like broccoli more than peas.

This is Allison's cold carrot salad.

Julie brought a pierogi sauerkraut dish.

Cousin C played along too and brought a spring pasta salad ...

and these fancy deviled eggs.

Easter Sunday

Soon after I woke up on Easter Sunday L sent me a photo of a cardinal she saw while working at Wilderness Lodge. They say seeing a cardinal is a spritual sign which seems even a bit more intriguing on Easter. It is spring, though.

Andy went to church early to make pancakes with our friend, N, for the Easter breakfast.

I made a casserole.

That's a lot of pancakes!

A picture of the Easter egg hunt. These kids were fast!

The sanctuary looked really pretty with the white draping and all of the spring flowers. This was the end of the service when everyone is invited to the choir loft to sing "Hallelujah Chorus."

I went home while Andy went to pick up B. The table is set.

Piper welcoming B home.

Let's eat.

Easter prep

Good thing I have a clean napkin I will put in this bread basket.

Yesterday I pulled out all of the dishes I'll need for Easter dinner, put together the hashbrown casserole, made a breakfast casserole for church, and cleaned (Andy helped). He even made deviled eggs for the church breakfast and since we were running low on refrigerator space, we took them to church and put them in the refrigerator there. I thought it would be fun to have everyone bring a new recipe to dinner tomorrow. I settled on a pea salad so I tossed that together too.

Fellowship Hall is ready for the breakfast and it looks like they found the tablecloths I donated from E's rehearsal dinner. I wanted to borrow one for Christmas and they couldn't find them ... thought they may have been mistakenly tossed out after the Thankoffering Dinner. Yikes. It was good to see them found and being used.

L sent this picture of the Easter basket W made for her.

Here's the picture of Sully upclose. I thought W had that taken as a surprise when he took Sully to the vet last week for his shots (pic below) but L said the groomer did it. I'm sure her cats are looking at him like he's silly but it's a cute picture.

We had to have everything done so we could eat dinner while watching the Illini in the Final Four (!!!) play Connecticut. I rooted for the Illini but I have Connecticut winning it all in Andy's office pool. The Illini lost but I've moved up in the office pool.

Spring flowers

A few warm days and the yard is full of spring flowers. Here are my hellebores ...

and hyacinth.

Grape hyacinth too.

Pretty sure I never planted these but Google Lens says they're striped squill.

And my daffodils. A few of these might end up on my Easter table.

On the rise

Madison and Lombard Avenue today. I'm glad I'm able to get gas at Costco where it was $4.07 today. Fortunately, my tank is still anout half full from when I filled up in early March.

Brings back memories

Ruby is still skittish, but she's sweet. The other day she cuddled up to me and rested her paw on my arm. Reminded me of August.

Bridesmaid dress

After months of me sending reminder texts, L finally went to try on bridesmaid dresses for Cousin C's wedding in June. She waited almost too late to order the dress for E's wedding, but it arrived in time. I didn't want a repeat of that.

She really liked this one, as did W. Andy was being sent the pictures too and didn't give father approval for that slit. I thought the color was too light but she said Cousin C said it would work with her shades of green color scheme:

Pretty.

I wasn't sure (at first) about the ruffle on this one though the fabric is interesting and it looks good on her.

This was nice too. It has a similar neckline to what she chose for E's wedding. I'm not going to say which one she chose so watch for wedding pictures in June.

Album deal

Kind of surprised this popped out to me from the shelf at Goodwill. It's a Creative Memories travel destination album that came new with a set of natural pages, but this pre-owned one had three sets of natural pages in it. There was also a package of white pages shoved in there with no price tag so I assumed they were selling it all together? Made the $4 purchase even sweeter.

I'll take the pages out of this to use but I'll donate or pitch the album itself. It's kind of ugly.

Yes, I’ll wash it

The problem with getting the linens out early for a holiday is that the cats think I've given them a new place to rest.

Palm Sunday

My artsy Palm Sunday photo.

They had us march into church yesterday with our palms.

Not really my thing, but I do like how the sanctuary looks in these pictures.