The day after Easter

I don't like to neglect this blog for more than a couple of days at a time, but I hope I might be excused for taking such a long Easter weekend. My sister and her husband were visiting from Dallas, my Number One Son came in from Chicago, and lots of other relatives were here for dinner on Friday evening, Saturday evening, and Easter brunch. At one point late yesterday morning, a bunch of us squeezed into my office and gathered around the computer, where we visited with a favorite nephew who's serving with the Army National Guard in Iraq. He has no access to a telephone, so it was a blessing to be able to see him on live video and speak to him via a microphone.

The Texans left yesterday afternoon, and my Number One Son returned to Chicago early this morning. Today my husband's back at work, Number Two Son is back in school, and here in the house it's dead quiet for the first time since Thursday. You'd think I'd be eager to jump back into my work, but while there's e-mail to be answered, taxes to be figured, and a romance novel to be written, my head is too full of pleasant memories to concentrate on any of those things. Just now as I photographed the spring bouquet that graced our Easter table, I imagined I could still hear the echoes of my family's boisterous laughter in the dining room and I grinned again at the stupid joke my brother told.

It was a very good weekend.