This is just a quick catch-up post so if anyone is still reading and enjoying this blog (and actually I know at least a couple do, including my cousin who told me so on Monday!) they have something to tide them over for a while.

I didn’t eat chocolate for all of Lent, not that I had to work that hard at giving it up. I’d kind of lost interest in it. But then on Monday my sister gave me some homemade rocky road she had sourced somewhere, loaded with the softest marshmallow you can imagine and roasted peanuts, and oh my goodness! So that’s pretty much gone.

It will take our kids a bit longer to get through their stashes. What you can see in the photo isn’t even all of it, this was after they had eaten some and I’d put the larger eggs and boxes of chocolate away in the pantry.

The Triduum and Monday’s public holiday meant lots of family, lots of prayer, and enough down time so that it felt like we’d had a good little break from school and work. My favourite parts were hearing the Exultet and the litany of saints at the Easter Vigil Mass, and when our youngest found the Easter bunny’s footprints outside the back door.

They were a row of wet splodges on the ground  – drying droplets of condensation that had fallen from the verandah covering. Or little bunny prints. Either way, it was a moment of magic for him and his just-older brother – and for the rest of us who watched them exclaiming over their surprise discovery.

What else has been happening while I’ve not been updating here? School holidays are coming around very quickly and I’ve got no plans for the children, but it’s only a two-week one so it shouldn’t be too hard to keep them occupied. We have two birthdays this month – 14 and 10.

In the last couple of weeks I’ve been often writing stories for The Catholic Weekly by day and reading new picture books with the littler ones at night. I can’t say ‘little ones’ because we don’t have any! Our youngest has made that big developmental jump that happens when kids start primary school, with a growth spurt for good measure. After a slightly traumatic start (for me as well as him) he is loving school and I can see that it’s good for him.

A card and gift arrived from a reader who wrote things that were so nice I had to stop reading it out loud to the family. I think it was mainly the Pitter Patter column she appreciated. She’d been reading it from the beginning when I was writing about expecting our first baby. Her daughter was having her first baby, also a girl, at the same time.

I’ve never been able (yet) to execute any grand writing plans. I’ve just plodded along as opportunities have come to me. But the writing I have done has been enough – more than enough when I think about it. I have affected people and been deeply affected by people I’ve written about and written for. I’ve benefitted more out of it than anyone else of course, over a very long time, and I’m very grateful.