7 am

I'm writing this on Monday morning.  Very early.  It is still a bit dark outside, although some light is beginning to come in.  I hear rain on the skylights above the family room and I before I walked down to the playroom to type so that I don't forget my feelings I pause at the doorway to the family room.  I smile seeing that the girls 'put back' their baskets so that they look the way the bunny left them.  All pretty again.  And I smile at the foil from little chocolate eggs on the floor in front of Anna's basket.  The opened up plastic eggs on the coffee table remind me of the little egg hunt in our house.  And the 'make your own Terrarium' necklaces they started after we got home from Mass are mostly done but little pieces of clay and dirt and moss are on the wood floor.

And to me it looks perfect.  Just as it should the morning after Easter.  All of the bunnies still up and garlands hanging.  It was a good, good, Easter.

There was a time (and maybe still a little still) that I wished I could go back.  To babies, to diapers, to cheerios in my purse to keep a little happy at church.  But this Easter I loved who they were,  the stage they are in now.

There are still challenges in this stage.  Some the same, some different.  ) But there is such joy in eight and twelve too.  Their eyes light up for different reasons now and they are still just as wonderful.

I caught Abigail with a pile of toddler books on her cousins bed, reading one after another to her three year old cousin.  Eyes sparkling.

Anna lovingly helping Abigail with a craft.  Checking in on her.  Being so sweet about not eating chocolate in front of her.  Distracting her from the 'treats' of the holiday that were all around her.  She just does it by instinct.  Eyes sparkling.

'Just Stay Little' will always be my hearts motto.  But enjoy them now, that's pretty good too.

On to Easter morning.



































































The best part of Easter was right after all of this.  Off to Mass