Easter Dinner

Chris, Jake, Dylan, and Sarah enjoy a hand of Uno Dare after dinner.

April 16, 2017

I am falling so far behind on my blogging! Somehow it seems that my final semester of teaching has been more hectic than ever...or maybe I'm just running out of steam, which only confirms my belief that it's time to retire! There just isn't enough energy to meet all of life's demands on my time, and thus my blog has taken a hit. Only six more weeks of school left, though, and then my time will be my own!

So here I am with the tale of our family Easter, 2017, six days behind schedule!

Sarah prepares to enjoy her dinner. By the way, she has lost 40 lbs so far!

She's very motivated by the David Archuleta concert coming in June!

Not that there's much to tell. Dylan, Jake, and Mark had to work that day. Thankfully, Mark got off work by noon so he was home to help with the cooking. He made the mashed potatoes, gravy, and stuffing, as well as slicing the ham. Plus Sarah and Chris came over around 4:00, meaning they were able to help in the preparation, too. Sarah was my right-hand gal, making the green bean casserole and preparing the corn and dinner rolls. All I had to do was get the ham in the oven and put the chocolate cream pie in the fridge to thaw. Oh, and wash up the meal-prep dishes!

Chris, Jake, and Dylan have their meal at the kitchen table.

Once the food was ready, I asked the kids if they wanted to dine formally or casually. After a few minutes of, "I don't care, whatever you want" and "It doesn't matter to me, what do you want to do?" it was finally agreed to eat casually. Dylan, Jake, and Chris sat at the kitchen table together while Sarah, Mark, and I took TV trays into the living room. We even used plastic cups rather than glass, in order to cut down on dishes to be washed. In the past, I've never used paper or plastic dinnerware for holidays!

It isn't a real meal until Dylan shares a view of his chewed food.

I think my family was trying to make it easy on me, rather than pulling out the table from the wall and bringing in the card table and extra chairs and all. It had been a very busy weekend, with lots of shopping on Saturday, followed by Sarah's orchestra concert and then the high school Prom that night. After Prom, I hadn't gotten to bed until about 1:00 a.m. but then I still had to get up at 5:30 a.m. to drive Mark to work. I was pretty tired by Sunday afternoon, so I appreciated having less work and less clean-up.

I guess in the end, formal or casual doesn't really matter, as long as we can be together and enjoy building the memories that bind us together as a family. And I do love my family!

All the ingredients for Easter dinner. That ham was amazing!

As you can see, our menu was basically the same as it is every Easter:

Baked Ham
Mashed Potatoes and Gravy
Pork Stuffing
Green Bean Casserole (low-carb version, better than original!)
Buttered Corn
Dinner Rolls
Punch
Chocolate Satin Pie

Plenty of food for just six of us! My usual brand of ham was sold out by the time I went shopping, so I tried this little 6.5-lb hickory-smoked Kentucky Legend ham instead, and I loved it! That's the one I'll be looking for from now on. Mark really liked it, too, which made me happy since he's been asking for ham ever since Christmas. What can I say, we had a free turkey in the freezer at the time...

My dinner plate with everything but the stuffing (don't care for the stuff).

And I prefer butter on my mashed potatoes rather than gravy...

I was so stuffed, I wasn't even able to take seconds!