A little different Easter Sunday

I love Easter. It probably is my favorite holiday. I mean, I love Christmas, but it's easy for me to get caught up in all the hype of that season, and the spiritual significance often gets watered down by the decorations and the traditions and the time with family. (And of course, I LOVE all of those things too!) But Easter seems to always surprise me with pure joy, and it always seems to come at just the right moment. Just when I am getting so tired that I don't want to keep going. Just when my heart needs to rejoice at the miracle of grace.

I also love that Easter has just a little bit of the spontaneous to it. When I was a child, we spent Easter in different places. Sometimes we gathered at my grandmother's house, sometimes we took a road-trip down to Hilton Head to see good family friends. Always there was a pretty new dress involved, and candy and most likely, a good meal with family & friends, but that meal changed locations and fares many times. The important thing, I suppose, was that it always happened.

When we first got married, I made a big deal of Easter at our house- forcing Andy to dress up for church and serving up a fancy Sunday dinner that I prepared. We took lots of pictures- even posed by the fireplace with our white trumpet lily in our Easter best. I was so homesick at that point that I wanted to make Easter Sunday feel as much like my childhood Easters as I could. I even made Andy an Easter basket!

Since then, things have settled. My heart still pines for home- just today, I registered for a 10k, and inadvertently typed "Fayetteville" in or my city of residence. Old habits die so hard. But, God has been working on my heart this year to rest in Him. So much striving for so long to perform well and make the best of things, even sometimes to the point of trying to make things in Texas into something that they aren't- mainly, they aren't North Carolina (go figure). Well, it's all worn me out. And I'm finding so much freedom in rest. It's nice to not try to make everything perfect all the time. (I'll have to write more about that another time).

Anyway, this year, that freedom found its way into the way we celebrated Easter. First off, we decided we'd have a picnic. We wanted to get our doggies out on a 'venture the way that we had been out on a 'venture to Boerne. Also, there was a park we discovered while driving around Georgetown back in the fall that we'd yet to pay a visit. So Sunday morning, we headed to early church, then packed a picnic lunch and headed to Berry Springs Park in Georgetown. The day was a little rainy, and rather cool. But green and fresh. There was a meal, and there was family, and it was a lovely Easter.

My favorite thing about Texas- bluebonnets

Our picnic- ham biscuits, deviled eggs, strawberries, cheese & crackers and Easter chocolates! 

"Please, Daddy." 

After lunch, we went for a walk. It rained most of the time, but we didn't really care. 

Daisy looks up from the fire pit area- so much for a girl to explore.

And explore she did! She climbed this tree. She really loves to climb trees and has absolutely no fear, which I guess is okay since I'm scared enough for both of us! 

I tried taking more pictures of Gatsby, but he stayed so busy with his ball, he was hardly ever still enough for me to get a good photo of him. 

Happy Easter from our family. :)