A blessed Easter!

It's Hodgepodge time!  So, Joyce is taking Spring Break next week, but I'll still be here! :-)  In the meantime, let us enjoy easter week, and hop on over to Joyce's blog to join in on the Hodgepodge fun if you'd like!  Have a blessed week, friends!

1. What are your plans for Easter? Are you cooking a big lunch or dinner?  Dyeing eggs? Attending a sun rise service?  Eating too much chocolate?

This year, for the first time ever, we will have Easter dinner up at my parents' house - this is the first time we have lived close enough to do that!  So we will go to church that morning, then drive up and have dinner with them and with my grandmother.  My mom is cooking most of the meal, but my brother and I will bring side items.  (My mom was in the hospital earlier this week, but insists that she feels well enough to still have Easter dinner!  And i wonder where my daughter and I get our stubbornness from... ;-)

And of course, we will dye Easter eggs on Saturday and hide them for an Easter egg hunt Sunday morning before church.  And Easter baskets.  Of course!

2.  What is something you feel too young to do?

Be so concerned for aging parents... both my mother-in-law, who is struggling with potentially life-changing health issues, and my mother, who collapsed earlier this week and was in the hospital for two days.  We are definitely in the "Sandwich Generation" of caring for our own children but also having aging parents to consider and be concerned for.  It is a strange time of life... 

(On a lighter note, I am also too young for menopause, metamucil, hemorrhoids, high blood pressure, as many gray hairs as I have, and age spots.)

3.  "Love is patient, love is kind.  It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud...it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs..."  

Of the characteristics mentioned in the biblical definition of love which do you find most difficult to live out and why?

Ugh - the whole "Keeps no record of wrongs" thing - so hard, when you've been wronged, taken advantage of, or abused.  So, so, so hard.  To truly not remember.  That's where God has to come in...

4. What's a springtime flower you associate with your childhood?

There are several, actually - gardenias, because there was a gardenia bush next to our front door that smelled SO good!  And roses, because my mom always had rose bushes.  And geraniums, because my grandmother had geranium bushes on the side of her house and I love the way the underside of the leaves smell - so sweet and lemony.  

5.  Ever sung karaoke? If so, what's your go-to song? If not and you're given the opportunity, would you? 

I have sung karaoke - it's so much fun!  Haven't done it in forever, though.  I don't think I did it enough to have a "go-to" song, but depending on the mood of the night, I could totally do either "What a Feeling" from Flashdance, or "I Dreamed a Dream" from Les Miserables.

6. What is something you keep in a basket?

Magazines under our coffee table, cleaning items in the bathroom.

7.  When was the last time you felt foolish?

The other day I sent off an email and cc'd someone I didn't mean to.  Luckily I had complimented them in the email!  But boy, did I feel ridiculous - and immediately sent off an email to both parties claiming lack of sleep and caffeine in my system!

8.  Insert your own random thought here.

It's Easter!  Please take a few minutes to remember exactly who it is that we celebrate... without Him, we have no hope.  That is what makes Christianity different from every other religion - because of Christ's resurrection, we have hope.