Happy Easter!

Happy Easter! (a little late...) Yes, I am a day late in wishing that but this weekend was filled with lots of great company, Harry Potter, tons of candy, and beautiful flowers!
This was my first Easter away from my family in Iowa and the first Easter I have ever spent at a Episcopal Church. Let me tell you, St. Stephens looked incredible! I asked my mentor, Anne, who works in the flower guild of the church, and they spent hours and hours on the arrangements at the alter and the garden in front of the pews. I can easily see why it took hours, the garden had little butterflies that moved and floated with a little waterfall. The alter was a sun and was huge. The decorating went all the way down to having put Koi fish into the baptismal water. Because I am in the cathedral choir, I had a pretty busy week. We sung at Maundy Thursday and then had practice after that. We sung at Easter Vigil and then sang in 2 of the 3 services on Easter Sunday. I have never seen so many people at our services before until Easter. It was completely full of people and it was great to see. There were children, which our church does not traditionally have a lot of small children but this weekend there was! They had a large Easter egg hunt in the Bishop's Garden on Sunday and all the kids were very excited to get more candy from what the Easter Bunny had already given them.

I was very lucky and I was able to join Tina and her family for Easter. I spent three nights with her and when we weren't singing in the choir, we were most likely watching Harry Potter and stuffing our faces with candy. As many of you know, I decided that I was going to read and watch all the Harry Potter's for the first time. I was very anti-Harry Potter for years, and this year for one of my New Years Resolution was going to be read and watch them all. Which was great, because all three of the kids love the movies and the two oldest have read the books as well! I had over 19 hours of Harry Potter ahead of me, but unfortunately, we ran out of time. We only got through 6 of the 8 movies. I was not able to finish the last book before Easter, so that gives me time to actually read it and enjoy reading it- everything happens for a reason!
All the kids did very well with their lent this year and every year they get what they gave up for lent. I did not get very far in my lent. I lasted about 2 weeks. I gave up bread for lent which proved to be impossible when I went to Georgia with the service trip. Regardless, the kids did great and got rewarded! One of them gave up all meat, and for Sundays lunch/dinner got London Broils from the Easter Bunny. Tina went Vegan so she got cheese and we had cheese omelets in the morning for breakfast. I am so grateful that they opened their house to me for so many nights and included me in all of their family outings.
I am also very excited for tonight (Monday) because I start my art class at the Art Association of Harrisburg. It is a class every Monday until June from 7-9pm. This class is basic drawing and I will be working with all kinds of mediums that I have not worked with before. Ink, charcoal, pencils, pastels, and a few other methods will all be used! I am very excited to meet new people in my class and to be working with my hands again! I have always loved being crafty, especially with scrapbooking but this will be a new skill for me, which is very exciting! I'm sure I will dislike some of them, but I hope to create a new hobby that I can carry over to when I go back to the Midwest.

This week at work will be pretty laid back compared to the few upcoming weeks. I will focusing on programming a party for service trips called Service Trip Extravaganza. I am also still working on the President's Honor Roll and I hope to complete that this week!

Giant Gummy Bunny