Of Easter Bunnies and Jelly Beans~~~~

Hello Darklings,

Well the title says it all,  we had a lovely Easter that included rain, wonderful, much needed rain with at least a foot of snow in the mountains and hopefully more for the next few days.

It will not repair much from the drought but it will help a bit.

We went to church and it was packed in spite of the rain, but I think I was a bit disappointed with the very casual dress by some of the people mostly the younger ones, I mean torn, dirty jeans??  Well if the young men and women I saw were going straight to a construction job I could understand that, but somehow I didn't think so.

But there were a number of people dressed in their best, but at least church was packed, Doyle suggested we might consider grabbing breakfast out, but we knew most places would be packed, but we did find a Denney's and got a decent breakfast.

Then back to my place to pick up a few things and then over to my brother's house to help out with the family dinner,  we were going to be eating late so it was just a matter of prepping the food and laying out the table.  And baking the pies in advance, the ham was going to be an easy matter, we do not do the honey bake ham, but a regular ham, I showed Monica how to rinse it of the excess salty gelatin, then to heavily cross thatch it, put whole pineapple rings on the top pack with brown sugar, and a coating of honey, and then the pineapple juice from the rings can, and more crushed pineapple.

We put it in after the pies were done and cooling, cooking at 325 for a few hours, the ham is cooked anyway it's just to get the other flavors into it and get it hot.

Crushed pineapple into a sauce as well as heated applesauce.   Everything else came together easily.

The Twins were disappointed because the entire back yard was wet and muddy so they couldn't play, so they just moped about while Coralline helped and Chris and his Dad and Doyle got the table pulled out to hold everyone and put the chairs around it.  The Twins were asked by their Dad to go down into the man-cave and play games,  which included finding small bundles of jelly beans,

Then it was just waiting for the ham to bake so we relaxed a bit before the last dash to ready the food.

We were so happy to have the rain, my brother found out from the former owner's son that there is a well on the property and showed him were it is, my brother thought that the "wishing well" was just a decoration but no next to it was a pump devise to bring up water to water the garden, but it had been shut down except to water the front lawn, the pump wasn't working so that is another project for my brother.

After dinner we relaxed and talked Coralline is so happy to get a card from you Patricia she hopes you got hers.  Both she and Chris were so happy to spend an entire week at their new home, and really get comfortable in it.

Of course we had to watch a religious movie so the choice was "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" just perfect.  We could have watched "The Ten Commandments" but it does run for 4 hours too late for the children, my brother suggest that he'd buy a copy so that next time it could be watched uncut in any way by commercials.  To see that many actor's and actresses playing in it and Yul Brenner making the final intonement of the inevitable fact, is at the same time hammy and dramatic.  And seeing Ann Baxter chewing up the scenery as if she were a silent movie vamp just delightful.

A hammy yet dramatic, extravagant spectacle, and Cecil B. DeMille's last film.  A legacy really.

I think I'll get a copy of it as well and also "Ben Hur",  I understand there is a DVD release that includes DeMille's silent version from 1923 that would be interesting to see.

I checked the water cisterns this morning and the rain helped to fill them up a great deal, I do hope we get more.

Later Darklings