Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!  Christ is risen today!

We have had a quiet but lovely day.  Mark and I spent the morning at church-- we had a fellowship brunch at 9:30, with worship to follow.  The worship service was wonderful, and it was so encouraging to hear the message again that we have hope for ourselves and also our loved ones who follow Jesus because of the work of the Cross.  All through the service I thought about Natalie and the awesome Easter she had today in heaven.  I missed her so much today.  I also missed Anna Kathryn today-- even though we haven't met her yet.  Maybe by this time next year we will have gotten a referral, or even be preparing to travel (I don't dare hope that we'll be home with baby by then).  

We came home and napped-- a direct result of the carb/cheese induced coma from brunch (there was an abundance of breakfast casseroles).  Then Mark fixed an awesome dinner (steak, twice baked potatoes, mashed acorn squash, creamed spinach.  I ate the last of the jelly beans for dessert.)  Mark has been toiling away on homework tonight.  I have been ignoring my homework in favor of scrapbooking and wasting time on the Internet.  And posting on here. 

I did have a small potluck-induced trauma this morning.  I decided to try a new recipe for my contribution to the brunch-- a recipe for Baked French Toast I found on Bigmama's  blog.  It sounded yummy, and fairly simple to make. Unfortunately, I forgot about my tendency to have "new recipe remorse."  This is what happens when you decide to make a new recipe for a church potluck or for dinner when company comes-- and it doesn't turn out the way you think it will, and you just wish you'd stuck to the same-old, same-old .  As usual, I was running late getting the thing into the oven, despite the fact that I had put it together last night.  I forgot that I had to make the "praline topping" before baking the french toast.  This involved dumping a lot of sugar and spices into 2 sticks of butter and smearing the mixture on the unbaked french toast.  I shoved the dish in the oven at 8:31 and it needed to bake for 40 minutes.  

 At 9:12, it didn't look quite done enough and we needed to be in the car driving to church.  Of course, having never made this recipe before, I had no frame of reference for the doneness.  I decided to turn on the broiler to hurry things up a bit.  In the middle of this moment, Mark came in to remind me that we needed to be on our way.  Now.  So, I asked him for his opinion on the doneness of the french toast.   He said he really couldn't tell, but if we were late to the brunch everyone would know which dish was mine whether it was done or not.  Not what I needed to hear at that moment.  After I had a small fit about the fact that taking food to a potluck stresses me out, I collected the french toast out of the oven, wrapped it in foil and dish towels (one of these days I am going to invest in one of those casserole carrier things), and off we went.  Thankfully, the baked french toast turned out to be really good-- I will make it again! 

** Image of the cross supplied by www.freefoto.com