Happy Easter! Happy Spring!  We enjoyed Easter Sunday at mass at the Cathedral at Charlestown Retirement Community Easter morning with our whole family and my Mom. Afterwards we all went out for Easter Brunch at a local restaurant. The food assortment was wonderful-lots of appetizers-oysters on the half shell, smoked salmon, peel and eat shrimp, ahi tuna, tomatoes and mozzarrella slices, cheese and sliced veggies, crab dip, crab soup, turkey, prime rib, eggs benedict, stuffed french toast, mac and cheese, potato salad, stuffed chicken salad sandwiches, greek salad, breakfast pastries and desserts. Plus our drinks. More food than we could possibly eat. The timing was perfect. Church was at 11 and Brunch was at 1. We were done in plenty of time for Allison to pack up her car(along with her Easter basket and the baskets I made up for her room mates) and head back to school. Easter mass was enjoyable too. We love Fr Leo's services and the cathedral is quite amazing-all in Italian marble and statues, as well as an incredible display of spring flowers. And the music is quite incredible too with the huge pipe organ and small orchestra playing violins and french horns.  And Fr Leo even mentioned MSU in his sermon! He was discussing the idea of hope and mentioned an old football game between Notre Dame and MSU. Of course he was rooting for Notre Dame, and the game ended in a tie(back in the 60s!). It was just fun hearing our school name mentioned at mass! Especially since the MSU basketball season has now ended. Along with Uof Maryland and Uof Michigan and any other team we were interested in! Oh well.

It was also wonderful having Allison return home for the weekend. I really love having her home. I get the added bonus of all her help. She does dishes and laundry and helps prepare dinner. As a matter of fact, Scott and Allison both cooked us dinner on Good Friday. Our last fish dinner of Lent. They prepared salmon with a mustard, maple syrup, garlic and lemon juice topping. Wonderful! (even though it sounds weird). Plus I did not have to cook it!  Especially since I was a bit pooped out from the day's activity

Scott was off school on Good Friday for the start of his Spring Break. He was ready for a break since he spent a day home sick the week before. He had to get himself back to class though since he had a bunch of tests scheduled before going on break. Tom was also busy with school.  He had spent the entire week in Alexandria, Virginia at a school conference. He offered to meet us both in DC at noon to check out the Cherry Blossoms and some of the Smithsonian museums. I drove Scott down to the Union station and we met Tom there for lunch. Afterwards, we decided to walk the National Mall rather than catch the train. I heard enough of trains catching fire, shutting down or being blown up recently, so with all the crowds I decided we could use the exercise. But it is certainly exhausting to walk from the Union Station all the way to the Jefferson Memorial and back. Plus a jaunt around the Natural History museum. We wanted to visit the Air and Space Museum. Allison and her room mate Jen had just visited the museums a week before during their spring break. But now more schools were off on vacation  and the people came to DC by the busloads. All the museums were crowded. There were very long lines outside all the buildings. They are also tearing up the lawn on the Mall around the memorials and in front of the Capitol, so there is not much space to move around since everything is fenced off. They are busy putting in a new irrigation system and lawn. We waited to the end of the day to get in to one of the museums and only made it in the Natural History museum. And we strolled through the Modern Art building briefly before it closed down.  Before that, we enjoyed the day walking around all the beautiful cherry tree blossoms on the tidal basin while negotiating all the crowds. And I am sure it only got worse as the weekend went on being the Easter Holiday along with having hit the prime bloom time for the trees and the start of the Cherry Blossom festival.

I was also busy on Saturday running Cookie in for her spring grooming, along with a hair cut for Scott and my mother. Allison spent the entire day at an Ultimate Frisbee tournament at Towson University. After all the hair appointments,  Scott, Mom and I went out to lunch before Scott had to head to work. However, one of Scott's coworkers took his shift so our family all went out to see the Batman vs Superman movie after dinner and dropping off mom. I think Eric S. said it best-it was an ok movie, a bit slow and it did not make a whole lot of sense why Batman and Lex Luther hated Superman so much. But we all enjoyed going out to the movies together and eating our big bucket of popcorn!

Scott is looking forward to his break from school and guitar lessons. Not much of a break beforehand. He and I enjoyed dinner and an awards ceremony at his Boy Scout Court of Honor ceremony last WEds. Tom was off to school. Scott received a medal for completing an extensive amount of volunteer hours helping out the boy scouts last year(mainly for the week he spent volunteering at cub scout camp) as well as a medal for an extended amount of hours spent camping last year and a badge in Mining. He is just happy to be winding down his job as assistant patrol leader and will be happy to just concentrate on badges and his Eagle scout project.