Easter weekend!

Friday of Holy week, we drove back to Wisconsin for the Easter weekend.  We drove straight to Sean's parents house, to drop off the kids and get ready for the Tenebrae (Good Friday) service that we were performing in that night.  Normally, we would bring the kids with to any church event, but for this particular service, the choir performs for the bulk of the service. Also, everyone that would normally help watch them (either Grandma or Grandpa, or Denise, or Uncle Mark Thomas, or the Ferguson) are all involved in the performance in some way, so it is just better to keep the kids home for this one.  Not to mention, this service is rather somber, so kids just being kids would be more distracting than during a usual service. 

The Tenebrae service was beautiful.  Sean had a vocal solo, "Given for You" which was particularly poignant since Sean just played Jesus the previous 2 weekends in The Living Passion. Mark Thomas Noel and I also performed the duet "Agnus Dei". 

Saturday, we headed over to my parents house and that evening Elena and I colored eggs for the Easter Bunny! 

Sunday morning, the kids hunted for their eggs and baskets!

 

 

Then, we got all dressed up in our Easter best and headed off to church.  The sanctuary had a beautiful surprise... the cross down front was completely covered in flowers! 

The children all received a set of Resurrection Eggs during the children's time. 

The choir sang "Arise, My Love" for the anthem.  "Arise, My Love" was one of the featured songs of The Living Passion, and performing it again for church was exciting.  In the play, we were all offstage behind curtains.  This time, we were all together, and we could all hear each other.  The men sounded wonderful, and the soloist Rex Wilkinson was amazing as well.  It was so powerful to hear the song this way compared to our performance (at least from the performers point of view), and with the church acoustics, too.  Also, being memorized from the show enabled us to see the audience's reaction better, and that was an amazing gift too. 

Elena & Benjamin with Grandma & Grandpa Badtke

 

Sean played Trumpet in a Brass trio, which always augments the hymns of Easter in such a glorious way.  It was Dale Johnson on euphonium and Kathy Ferguson on flute.  Ok, so it wasn't entirely brass, but it was a trio. 

Elena & Benjamin with 2 of Elena's favorite people, Makenzie & Audra Ferguson

After church, we took many pictures with friends and family and headed off to Uncle Tom's house for our family Easter dinner.  We met up at the house of my Dad's brother, Tom and his wife Marcie. All in attendance were my Mom and Dad, Sean, the kids and I, my grandfather, Russ, my uncle, Tom, my aunt, Marcie, my cousin, Genesee, and her husband, Pat, and son, Caius, my cousin, Marshall, my sister-in-law, Lindsey, and our nieces, Hailey and Penny (unfortunately, my brother, Scott, had to work).

Elena with "Tito Hom" (as she says...)

Me & Ben with Genesee & Caius

(Boys are 2 months apart in age, Caius being the older one)

(Genesee and I are 6 months apart in age, I am older)

We had a very nice meal, and then the kids played a lot.  They got some Easter basket gifts and went outside to play with their bubbles. 

Elena and her cousins, Hailey & Penny

Caius wowed everyone with his unwavering stroll, but Benjamin wasn't very interested in showing off his new found ability to take some steps.  However, he did show off an ability with other steps; going down them actually.  Benjamin turned himself around and feet first, crawled down the step.  He then proceeded to repeat going up and down the landing step over and over for quite some time.

All the cousins together, the girls are not sure what to do with a crying Ben!

Later that evening, back at my parents house, we watched "The Robe" on TCM for a while, but then watched "Hop" which Elena received in her Easter basket.  The main character's name is E.B. like Elena Belle, so she really liked the movie.

 

We had a nice weekend with our friends and family and will miss you all over the next month.  We won't be back to Wisconsin at all in April because of my show "Spreading it Around" at the Bell Tower Theater which runs the last 3 weekends of April (closing performance is Saturday, April 27th).