Happy 1st Easter!

Today is Easter... Darby's first Easter!!! Our original plans were to go to San Diego and see family who hasn't seen Darby is a long time and have a big family celebration. However, since we are on quarantine, we decided to have a little family Easter, just by ourselves.

This, mind you, was my FIRST family holiday dinner that I have ever made, alone. We kept it small, and decided on only one main dish and two sides. Jason was a trooper and helped me with the green beans that I made the night before.

I have learned that when you have a small child, you do as much as you can when you can do it, because you NEVER know what the future holds. I didn't know if I'd have much time today to do the actual cooking, so anything that I could do ahead of time, I did. This included green beans.

Now, the green beans are definitely one of the best foods ever made. My family has made them for YEARS! I've decided to dub them "Secret Special Stolen Green Beans". Why that name? Well apparently the story goes like this... My mom was in the check out line at the grocery store and was flipping through a magazine. She saw this recipe that looked really good and wanted to get the magazine. Chris, my step-father, decided that was pretty ridiculous. Why pay for a whole magazine to just get this recipe that was probably part of an ad? So he just ripped it out and took it. Yes folks, he just stole it :0) I, however, am now thankful he did. I can't imagine my life without this green beans. My family has figured out that you can really make them ahead of time and reheat when you get the party, and it actually tastes almost better!

Then we needed meat. Ham = Easter Right? I don't really know why... maybe it was one more way to offend Jewish people... but hey, thats okay. (Disclaimer: I'm not saying its okay to offend Jewish people. Jewish people and their dislike for Ham just came to mind since I have seen numerous Jewish people lately and I always think of them during holidays that refer to Christ and wonder how they feel when they are asked by the cashier at the store what they are doing for Easter. I made that mistake once at Christmas... I felt pretty stupid.) Ham is good. I never make it, but I think I will now do it more often. I was inspired by recipe that was emailed to me from Living Without magazine. It was for a glaze made with apricots and brown sugar... at least I think it was. So I decided to buy this baby ham from Trader Joes, and slice it up. Heated it in the microwave (it was already cooked), sliced it up, and then made my own Apricot, Brown Sugar, Cinnamon glaze, smothered the poor ham, and put it in the broiler. YUM.

Then for the next side dish, we did sweet potatoes! Most often, when cooking, I just eyeball stuff. I didn't measure anything and I just throw in there what looks good. They turned out alright, but not as good because I didn't put enough butter in it. I got scared and I knew I should have put more, but I was scared of too much butter... as jason said later "You didn't want to Paula Dean it", I'm just proud of him for knowing who that is :0)

I bet you weren't expecting them to look like that...

One of the best parts of today was definitely how it was more than just darby's first Easter. It was my first kitchen fire... yes folks, I broke the cardinal rule and looked away from the marshmallows in the broiler, when I came back it looked a bit burnt, and then I opened the door and it started ablaze. I promptly yelled for Jason and he grabbed my potholder and started hitting the little fire. Which worked. He saved the day, because I totally froze :0( whoops?

That was the causality of the incident. It was a good pot holder... but it was getting dirty. I suppose this was a better fate than me trying to wash it.

Then Darby got his first Easter basket :0) It had eggs, with nothing in them, and some chocolate Carmello bunnies, which Mommy has already started eating, and the cutest stuffed toy named 'Domo'. I don't know where this Domo character comes from... but I've seen various shapes and sizes of him at Target... Japanese maybe? I don't know, but I do know that its adorable and Darby had to have it.

The rest of the day was full of chores and such. I had motivation so I figured I should go with it. I finished making baby food for a good while, did a couple loads of laundry, bathed a screaming baby, dusted, thought about making banana bread (the night is still young...ish), and let jason go play Halo at a neighbor's apartment (he has to do dishes later, so its pretty even). Oh, I also fed Darby prunes... he doesn't like them so much. He ate them, but definitely showed more favor towards sweet potatoes then prunes. Yet, Darby's butt and his parent's sanity, needed him to eat the prunes.

And as a side note, regarding darby's health, he's been seizure free now for a while! His last one was last tuesday night? So we call the Neurology team tomorrow and tell them that, and hopefully we'll just progress on the medicine as we were and be done by the first week of May with the nasty medicine! Then our quarantine will be lifted! WOOOO :0) We are just thankful to God who, we believe, did another miracle for us. We begged him for a miracle when darby had his stroke, and another when we found out about the Infantile Spasms. Its hard to comprehend that he's do it again! Crazy.