Easter Challah

On Saturday I decided that I could have done well as the wife of a Messianic Jew. I decided that I would experiment with a new challah recipe for Easter. Challah is a wonderful, eggy, rich braided bread that is traditionally served at Shabbat in Jewish families. I fell in love with it and began making it following time I spent with a wonderful Jewish family in Eagen in high school.

[Making the challah prompted me to search for Frances (the "mom" of the family I stayed with) on facebook. We connected this weekend, but last night I discovered that she has been battling colon cancer for over a year (they have three small children). I climbed into bed crying thinking about she, her husband and their precious kids last night. ]

I worked on Easter morning, but I sent the bread as our family "offering" with Philip that morning. He joined some of our small group friends for a mini feast following a Sunday service at the chapel that was OVERFLOWING. I was sad I couldn't go to church but was grateful for the opportunity to be able to cheer things up a bit around the clinic (I planned some games and took a couple of the girls to the river to feed ducks) as weekends often tend to feel quite lonely, boring and miserable. The girls were great. While my Easter lunch consisted of scrambled eggs and cheese in a pita (a far cry from the ham and turkey and "grandma bread" being served at the Pearsons that afternoon) the morning and the meals themselves were relatively uneventful. I left Norwich @ 2 and Philip and I then proceeded to go over to our chaplin's house to hang out with their family and play Settlers of Catan.

Friday we had an awesome night @ our friends' house. Suzie and I are two peas in a pod. While we were in the kitchen discussing the psychology worshop she is in at Cambridge about bereavement (fascinating), the boys talked finance and military. They are both tremendous individuals. Suzie has been contracted to do investigations by the US embassy in London. Jason has a really cool intel job. Suzie and I were discussing today how nice it is to have your husband actually get along just as well with your girlfriend's husbands as you do with the girlfriend.

Saturday Philip had the opportunity to spend the day with his commander moving a family in the squadron who's husband/dad is in Afghanistan right now. He enjoyed having a chance to help out and spend some good one-on-one time gleaning wisdom from Lt Col Whatley.

I had Friday & today (Monday) off as they are "bank holidays" (kind of the equivilant of US federal holidays) for work. I haven't done anything too exciting - cleaning, grocery shopping, baking bread, laundry, studying. . . I realized how grateful I was for my job on Friday (yes, my first day off) when I was thinking, "wow I'm glad I don't have to do life like this every day now. I don't function well like this at all. I'm so glad I have somplace to GO to 5 days a week at a set time while Philip is working." SO GRATEFUL.