Josh is on Spring Break.

We spent yesterday at his folks, today at my folks along with my brother and his family.  Catherine got to do an Easter egg hunt with her cousins at my parents' church.

 

 
Tomorrow is breakfast and Easter service at our church.  Josh will help make the breakfast with other men at the church.

After church we are hosting "Easter Breakfast" - for lunch.  I will throw together a fruit salad.  We'll have an egg casserole, and the traditional Slovenian dishes from my husband's side of the family:  a sweet bread called poteca:

Our first loaf of poteca, so long ago

And a platter with cold hard boiled eggs, ham, kielbasa and horseradish.  Unique, huh?  As far as I know it doesn't have a name, so we just call it "Easter breakfast."

My first introduction to his extended family was Easter up North six years ago I believe (I'm not too good with dates and numbers and particulars).  I was asked if I wanted horseradish on my serving of "Easter breakfast".  I said, "Sure" and there was an immediate uproar of joyous acceptance into the family.

Our first Easter together

There will be horseradish tomorrow.

I decided it would probably be a good thing to write another post since I'm participating in this Forgotten February writing challenge.

I'm writing on the topic of siblings today.


I want to tell you about my brother Andrew.  We are close in age (16 months apart), close in geography (24 miles apart), and close in friendship.  I even followed him out to California to live with him for awhile.

We're both back in the Midwest now and try to get together every couple weeks or so.  Sometimes more often.

It's been a long time though since he and I have hung out as just the two of us.  Now there's more people in the mix - his wife Jen, their two kids, my husband Josh, and our daughter.

 
He's never more than a phone call away.  I can and do call him frequently needing help with some random thing - often related to technology.  In fact, I was able to make that "Just Show Up" graphic at the end of my last post thanks to his help over the phone - shout-out!

When Andy and I both worked downtown, we'd periodically meet up for lunch during the business day.  When the weather was nice (hard to even imagine right now...grumble, grumble), we'd walk, meet half-way, dine, and talk talk talk.  We're good at that.

He's always good for a laugh, always good for an answer, always good for advice and discussing, and always good for a guessing game.  "Hey, guess who I saw at Target today."  And then we'll proceed with a bunch of yes-or-no questions until the correct guess is made.  We both do this, and I think our respective spouses are just perplexed by how much we enjoy this.  Hey, we had to do something to pass the time during long family road trips as kids!

I've always said about my brother "When we get along, we get along really well.  But when we fight, we fight really well."  And our spouses can attest to that as well, as I'm sure can our parents.

We learned quickly while living together in Burbank that adult siblings don't make the best roommates.

But we have a great relationship now that we're not living together anymore!


The second thing I want to write about in regards to the topic of siblings is our daughter.


Our plans were certainly for Catherine to have a sibling or two or three.  But this hasn't happened yet.  It's been an extreme roller coaster of emotions for both Josh and me.  We always knew we wanted at least two children.  And perhaps as many as four.  I've always loved big families.  And though I don't go out of my way to tell them this, I feel very bad for my friends who don't have siblings.  Josh's and my plans were that we'd have two and then re-address the situation.

Well . . .  that hasn't happened yet.  And it's been hard.  The thing that complicates it more is how my last pregnancy ended, how I ended up on bedrest and then admitted to the hospital, then having a C-section and then a really horrible recovery.  It's incredibly hard for me to think of going through that again.  Just being real.

So these conflicting desires make the whole thing quite challenging.  I often remind myself that God knows what is best for us.  But it's still hard to accept sometimes.
I am grateful though that Catherine has cousins who are close by and close in age, and I hope they can continue to grow up together!

Photo by House of Harkless