Happy Easter Monday! I hope and pray you had a wonderful Easter, and perhaps get to relax a bit today. For my family, it's back to business as usual with work and school, though I do get a break from church duties this week (working from home rather than going into the office). Yay for breaks- even small ones. Our weekend was incredibly busy, and there are no signs of April slowing down and being any less busy than March was.

When we get to this point in the school year, I feel like there are so many things happening! The school is trying to cram in a few more events, there's testing coming about soon, book fairs, performances, etc. We'll soon be wrapping up kid's programming at church, as well as piano lessons for the year. Volunteers are tapped on energy, and everyone is ready for a break.

Back to our busy Easter weekend... I spent part of Saturday afternoon in the kitchen with my girls. I had corn bake and Oreo dirt cake to make for our Easter lunch, and they both wanted to help. Both recipes called for lots of mixing. The Oreo dirt cake is a family favorite, but requires about five minutes of mixing a pudding mixture. The girls love pudding, and couldn't wait to get a taste of that runny, creamy chocolate! I promised them that they could each have a spoonful of pudding, but had to wait until the pudding was fully mixed. S was my main mixer, and Baby C was a great helper. They were doing so well with whisking the milk and pudding mix for about two minutes, and then the complaints started to roll. "My hand hurts." "I'm tired." "I don't want to do this anymore." "What about the dirt cake, though," I asked. "We can't finish making the dirt cake unless we finish mixing the pudding and let it set up."

I could see S thinking about it, longing for that dirt cake on Sunday afternoon. You see, it was her birthday treat, as we were to celebrate her birthday with our whole family during our Easter gathering. "I got this," she exclaimed and whisked that pudding like there was no tomorrow. After two or three more minutes, the pudding was mixed, and we were ready to complete our dirt cake.

On Sunday, our family gathered together, enjoyed Easter lunch after church, and we celebrated S' birthday. The joy on her face to see the cake she helped to make was so apparent. For my little big girl knows that hard work pays off, and sometimes we have to remind ourselves to keep going, even when we feel like giving up.