Hope everyone has a happy, safe, and enjoyable Easter holiday! Spending my morning with organist duties at church in an always enjoyable time with instrumentalists. Following that up by cooking dinner for the family (citrus-brined turkey, garlic-butter string beans, rosemary smashed potatoes, greens with candied walnuts and fresh cranberry vinaigrette dressing, plus vanilla-infused french bread). Sounds like a lot of work, and to some degree it is, but I actually enjoy cooking. Tomorrow is my 35th birthday, so I got to celebrate a day early as well.
With only one week left till my 3rd half marathon, the St. Luke’s Half, I ran a 6.2 mile training run yesterday afternoon. This gets filed under the “not feeling it” category. I completed the run, but just didn’t feel great the whole time. Not sick or anything like that, just not into the run. My pace suffered a bit, but at this point, tapering is the name of the game. We’ll see how the week of easy runs plays out. Right now, between the running yesterday and the cooking earlier today, I’m definitely feeling aches all over.
It was nice to just relax this evening… took the kids to the playground for a bit and let them burn off some energy (and sugar from all the candy they got). It’s kinda sad how commercialized Easter got. Both kids got multiple baskets, a bunch of candy, and toys?!?!?! I can’t recall growing up when I looked forward to Easter for the presents – that anticipation occurred at Christmas and my birthday. We need to get back to remembering the real reason for the season. Too much focus on material things instead of the religious drivers of the holiday. I can’t recall anywhere in the Bible where Jesus brought chocolate bunnies to his friends after he rose from the dead… seriously, it’s becoming overload. But that seems to be the case with any major holiday. I fully expect to see mall Christmas trees out in September again.