Easter Morning

Easter is one of my very favorite holidays, along with Thanksgiving.  Often we travel back to North Dakota for Easter when it aligns with one of our big breaks from school, but this year it did not, so we stayed put.  Because I love Easter music and especially Easter hymns, I asked Dr. Peds if it would be alright if I went to a more traditional worship service at another church and then to our church also on Easter morning.  The worship at our church is usually very contemporary, which isn’t bad, but for me it’s like worshipping in my second, not as fluent language, and on Easter I wanted to worship in my native tongue.

We went back and forth about the best way to accomplish getting to two church services, having breakfast here at home and doing Easter baskets, and getting a couple of salads ready to take to a friend’s house for lunch, and we finally decided that we should all just go to both services.  Overall, this went very well, and I LOVED getting to worship with a gigantic pipe organ, brass, handbells and timpani at the church we visited (my favorite Easter hymns were sung!  And I could sing as loud as I wanted and it all fit my voice just right!) The service at our usual church was beautiful too, in so many sincere and deep felt ways.

But of course, such a morning could never go without some kind of craziness around here, and this one was no exception.  The Easter tradition when we are home is that the night before Easter I hide a basket for each kidlet.  Inside the basket is usually books ( because I love to buy books and don’t really like to buy other things) maybe a couple of little things, or a new swimsuit if that is needed for a particular kidlet, and squeezy fruit.  The squeezy fruit, applesauce or pureed fruit in a little pouch that you squeeze, is a big deal.  The kids love it and I never buy it because it’s too expensive for everyday.  It’s perfect for an Easter basket, though, because it’s healthy and super special.  Each basket had three pouches in it on Easter morning, and nearly everyone had downed all the pouches gifted to them by 7:30 a.m.  Anyway, I tie a piece of yarn to each basket and then weave the yarn all around the house, zigzagging from here to there and going in and out of cupboards and closets and all sorts of places.  Each kid has a different color of yarn, and it creates quite the obstacle course in the end.  In the morning they have to follow their string to get to their basket.

This year YaYa’s basket was in the garage in a cooler.  I thought it was pretty brilliant, actually.  Mr. SP was up first and located his basket, but he had so much fun he decided to follow everyone else’s string to see where their baskets ended up.  He may or may not have told YaYa exactly where her basket was hidden before she even started with the string, but to her credit, she was a good sport and followed the string anyway.  This may be because it’s never prudent to trust a pesky little brother.

So, I’m not sure who it was who let the cat in the garage while looking for Easter baskets.  The cat is always getting into the garage to explore, which is fine except that he gets locked in the garage, and that makes him nervous, so he ends up peeing right by the door back into the house.  About an hour later, I opened the door to get my coat for church, and sure enough, out came the cat.  I was in a hurry, rounding up kids to get in the car, so I thought about the possibility of Brutus having had an accident, but decided to let it go until later.  The kids grabbed their coats from the floor, where the coats had spent the night because as usual they didn’t hang them up like they were supposed to.

Let us pause and consider the fact that initially cat pee does not smell for a short time.  And then it smells very bad.

We sat down in our seats at First Lutheran Church and Dr. Peds remarked that the church smelled like cat litter.  I gave him a look.  Ridiculous.

Halfway through the service, he remarked that Mr. SP really, really smelled like cat pee.  And that’s when I remembered the coats.  Brutus must have really let loose on Mr. SP’s coat, and the smell got on his sweater and my goodness sakes, it really, really did smell.  Horrible.  We were in the back row, closest to all the musicians so the little people could watch the instruments, so thankfully there weren’t that many people behind or off to the side of us, but I’m afraid the people in front of us got a nose full during their Easter morning worship.

The girls’ coats were fine, and so we just had Mr. SP carry his coat quickly to the car, avoiding having him stand near anyone else and thankfully there was a bit of time between the first service and the late service at our church for us to come home, make a fruit salad and for Mr. SP to change his clothes and dip in the shower again briefly.  He was quite vocal about his displeasure regarding that, but we informed him that it would be mandatory.  Everyone left for the second service smelling clean and fresh.