Weekly Update: 4.6.24
Christ is risen!
He has risen indeed!Ancient Paschal Greeting
It was still dark when we woke up on Easter Sunday and began dressing for church. As the sun was coming up, we loaded our potluck contributions into my folks SUV -- overnight crockpot breakfast casseroles and a fruit salad. We drove through the rolling green hills dotted with redbud and dogwood, gazing at the new life springing from every inch of the Ozarks. It was the first sunrise service I have attended since our first Easter in Missouri 20 years ago. So much life has happened since then, but it felt oddly fitting to commemorate the first Easter on our homestead this way. I felt so blessed settling into the church sanctuary surrounded by my whole family. And it was special sharing Easter breakfast with my larger family in Christ. As I tasted the comforting flavors of biscuits and sausage gravy, I felt so -- at home, both physically and spiritually. And that homeyness exists because of Christ and His work that gives us our own new life, a new family, and a future hope for the rest of creation.
We took a scenic drive home and enjoyed an afternoon of celebrating both Easter and the last two family birthdays of "birthday season" (most of our family has a birthday between the end of February and the beginning of April). Since the weather was warm, we got to spend most of the day outside. First, we showered Bonnie-Jean and our nephew Beren with birthday gifts.
Next came the family egg hunt. We had helped the kids color eggs using the viral rice method on Saturday. The eggs were pretty, but the colors were rather pale and ended up fading off of the shells almost entirely. I blame the Watkins food coloring we used.
Our brother Jeremiah once again planned a grown-up egg hunt, but instead of simply hiding the eggs this year, he created an app to find them geocache style. (This is the sort of thing that happens when you have a software engineer for a brother.) He stuffed the eggs with chocolate, toiletries, and other treats. We had a blast traipsing around our property, crawling under the house and hiking out into the woods. The app scored participants based on their finding abilities, and Grace and Bonnie outdid us all -- winning Stardew Valley style straw hats. The kids darted around us, filling their baskets with candy-filled eggs along with those they colored. Uncle Jeremiah hid a giant golden egg as well, which was found for the second year by Eilley Mae.
After the hunt, we enjoyed an Easter/birthday pasta dinner. Bonnie-Jean requested a Tortellini recipe we had seen online, and Beren hunted up an idea from our new Pioneer Woman cookbook -- Mushroom and Black Pepper Pasta. Both were wonderful, and I don't typically even like mushrooms. We completed the meal with a big Italian salad and sourdough toast.
For dessert, Bonnie-Jean requested a Pineapple Coconut Spoon Cake. Once again, I'm amazed with the good things that can come out of a slow cooker. We served it with big scoops of vanilla ice cream. Unfortunately, we dug right in and no one thought to snap a picture.
We made Beren birthday bunny cars. My mom had seen these cute Twinkie-Peeps creations online. She thought they were adorable and hoped to make them for the kids for Easter. Then, when we were organizing our storage unit, we found some recipes and clippings from my grandma in a box of cookbooks. One of the clippings was from an old magazine featuring this same idea -- only the Peep bunnies were driving Ho-Hos. Apparently, Memaw had also loved this idea. How we wish she was here to see Beren's face light up at the sight of his birthday cakes. We are missing her especially this time of year, as she always loved Easter.
The last part of our festivity was a grown-up shared Easter basket from our Mom. We ate way too much chocolate, chased with cups of coffee. All the festivities made for much more sugar in our diet than we are used to, but it was sure a nice treat.
The rest of the week paled in comparison with our weekend. On Monday, Grace and I put together a laundry station. Since our washer broke last week, we have switched to handwashing, and we decided we needed a better setup. I've written a full post on the process for later in the week. We are pleased with our new system, even though washing clothes does take up more of our time than it used to.
As much as we are enjoying our new setup, we'd love to find an affordable old wringer washer someday. I read that when Maytag stopped manufacturing them in 1983, they had stockpiled enough parts to last a couple decades, as they were built to last. People still use them, though they are getting more and more difficult to find.
After building our washing station, we all ran around prepping for bad storms in the forecast. After dinner, the forecast shifted to indicate most of the storms would go around us. Right around 10 pm, though, the storms swung back into our direction. We headed to our storm shelter and listened to the radio as NOAA blared that there was a tornado on the ground in nearby Ash Grove. Thankfully, no one was hurt, and most of the damage was to trees as far as we have heard. But we were once again so thankful for our shelter. It was one of the best decisions we made when choosing to live in a wall tent in the Ozarks.
The freezing nights slowed down a few of our building projects, and the wet weather slowed down the garden, so we spent multiple days drafting plans and ordering supplies. We ordered our bathroom sinks as well as our bathtub shower faucet and drain. Earlier in the week, we took a trip to Menards to get our PEX supplies so we can start our water lines.
On days we had good weather, the men worked on stocking us up on firewood. Grace and I cleaned up some leftover plywood siding to use building our lofts. All of us ladies spent time in the garden when we could.
It was a festive, fun few weeks, but it feels good to look forward to more normal life. Birthday season is behind us, and we are ready to get serious about making progress around our place. Spring is in full swing, as the world looks greener every morning. The weather is only going to improve from here on out, and we are all feeling optimistic about the next steps of our project. Today, we have water lines we can run, a drain system we can finish, loft rafters to white wash, a roof to finish, and a garden site just waiting to be dug into. It's all good, honest work -- and I look forward to seeing it all unfold.
