When Not-So-Perfect is Perfect

So, over the last few days, Facebook and many lovely blogs were covered with beautiful Mother's Day gifts, stories of how this special day was spent with special lunches or dinners, and I truly hope everyone had a wonderful day! You all deserve it so much!

And how was my day? Quite honestly unsuccessful. We were partly still dealing with our jetlag, and even though the ads at the airport in Philadelphia notified us about the impending Mother's Day, it took us until Thursday or Friday to even figure out that Sunday was Mother's Day.

Saturday night, I spent preparing the almond crescent rolls for breakfast, because I saw them in a magazine and they looked so yummie; and I went to bed way too late.

Come Sunday, hubby and I take turns getting up to prepare the girls' first breakfast, wipe poopie bottoms (sorry, TMI, but life of a parent), and switch on the TV. Way too late, we finally get up; I switch on the coffee maker and pop the crescent rolls in the oven. Oh, and remember again that it's Mother's Day. Hubby gets up a few minutes later. We all have breakfast together and halfway through (the girls had already run off to more important things), hubby asked: Is today Mother's Day??? 

Ineed, it was. And it wasn't picture perfect. There were no big gifts (I did get very cute flower pots from the girls, which I loved!!), there was no breakfast in bed or dinner out, but it was perfect for me. I got to spend it with the people I love most. I got to talk on the phone with a very close friend and my mom. We had a great family breakfast, we relaxed a lot, and hubby made a yummie dinner of pasta and pesto.

And while our extremely low-key Mother's Day may not seem perfect at all, it was all I needed and wanted that day, and I am truly happy and thankful for it!

Welcoming 2014

I'll be out tonight welcoming this new year with great company, lots of food, good conversation, and at least one (or ten) viewings of this gem, that is obviously lost to the English-speaking world but a New Year's Eve classic here in Germany. Enjoy and hope to see you all next year!

The Atheist Alternative To Easter

Yes, I'm not only a fan of the winter solstice or Yule celebration, but also love Easter. No, I am not talking about the barbarical celebration of a poor fellow being nailed to a cross, falls into coma and somehow lives to tell about it. I am talking about the spring celebration that's happening between the end of March and mid-April.

Yes, I am serious. Besides going to church (sometimes several times) during those last days of the "Passion of Christ", most of today's Easter traditions are more Pagan then Christian:

Easter is scheduled around the start of spring (March 20), but also encorporates a lot of beautiful Pagan traditions to welcome spring. Even though I am an Atheist, I still enjoy a lot of Pagan traditions year-round. Most of all, because the reasons for these celebrations can be clearly explained by science; besides that, I feel very connected to nature, and therefore love to celebrate the seasons as they change.

The Easter egg and Easter bunny both stand for fertility and are the symbols of the Nordic goddess Freya, whose domain is love, fertility, and family. (Please forgive me if it makes me smile if I see churches decorated with Freya's eggs during Easter!)

Thus, I am looking forward to preparing Easter baskets, coloring and decorating eggs, and hoping for some nice weather to have a Easter egg hunt outside in the garden!


Fun fact: Violet was almost 13 months old when she got to celebrate her first Easter; she was born the day after Easter in 2010 and 2011 had an extraordinary late Easter.