Easter goodness

Matt and I decided to stay home for Easter this year. We were originally going to travel home to Cincinnati but since we were just out there 2 1/2 weeks ago, my body decided on a break instead.  Matt surprised me by coming home on Thursday evening!!  As many of you may know, we are in a bit of a transition in our lives.  Matt currently works in Richmond and was driving nearly 1,000 miles each week.  For his safety and health, we decided that it would be best if he stayed in Richmond for part of the week.  Typically, that means Matt is gone Tues-Thurs.  So when Matt called me on Thursday afternoon and said, "I'm in Appomatox about 20 minutes away," you can imagine my excitement!!  It was a wonderful 4 days together.

On Saturday morning, Matthew was up with the roosters at 6:00am. I stayed in bed and finally got up around 7:30am.  As I started to walk down the stairs, Matthew said, "Wait, don't come down yet...give me 10 more minutes."  I waited atop the steps until he invited me down. I had NO clue what he was up to.  When I walked into the kitchen, there was a card on the table which told me there were 18 eggs hidden around the living room and bathroom.  Additionally, there was one special (silver) egg which had a clue within it.  After about 20 minutes, I found the eggs!!  Matt was quite stealthy with his egg hiding skills. Some were very obvious to find while others were nearly impossible to locate.  Secretly, he had to help me find a few.  Once I found the silver egg, I opened up the clue and was led to my Easter basket.  Here is a picture of the sweet basket that Matt assembled.  Once I went through my basket, I began to go through all of the eggs.

Within each egg, Matthew had written down a "to do"  which created our 5-year bucket list.  While some of the "to dos" will be easy to complete, others will take much more money, planning and time to accomplish.  To preserve the sweet moment, I glued each "to do" back on a notepad and snapped a photo.   It was so clever and so sweet.  What a romantic!!  Matthew and I accomplished one of the "to dos" and FINALLY went to the New London Steakhouse together.  We have been intending to go there for months and have never gotten ourselves to actually make the reservation.  We finally went on Saturday evening and had an absolute blast.

Sunday was a fabulous day as well.  We woke up early and had breakfast together (Panera bagels if you must know). HAHA.  We headed to church and heard a wonderful message by Pastor Dupin.  After church, I started making lunch for us which included a honey baked ham, perogies, freshly steamed broccoli and garlic/parmesan mashed potatoes.  We concluded our meal with a new recipe.  Using all Splenda products for the sugar and brown sugar, I created a fantastic (healthier) apple crisp pie.  I know it turned out well because Matthew ate the majority of it and when I looked in the fridge today, it was gone.

After dinner we proceeded to color Easter eggs.  What is an Easter celebration without some fun egg coloring?  Matthew and I gathered all of our supplies and began dunking the eggs.  We created some really interesting colors and I got a photo of it.  I also snapped a picture of a blue/pink egg to represent nugget.  I posted this photo to my Facebook account.  In one week, we will officially be able to refer to nugget by his/her name :)  The excitement and anticipation continues to grow with each day.

All in all, a fabulous and relaxing weekend at home.  A wonderful weekend/holiday celebrating our risen Lord and Savior.