Thank goodness we filed our taxes early, or the past two weeks might have caused a full blown nervous breakdown.

To start at the end, Pope Benedict and I have a birthday today. My husband got me some beautiful and yummy looking fruit tarts for my "cake" but I think His Holiness might just have gotten the cooler birthday eats. Of course, who knows what kind of cake I might get if I'm around at 82?

And now to back up to things gone by, I hope all my readers out there who celebrate Easter had a lovely one. I sure never thought growing up that's be one celebrating it. But here I am.

Ours was a very, very full time. Three weeks before Easter, our priest, who is new to the parish, decided our parish should have all the usual Holy Week services. They had not been celebrated in our parish for over 50 years, so this was a big deal, especially to make happen on three weeks notice.

My husband and the schola started practicing a lot, leaving some of their wives with young children rather frustrated and overworked. I supposed it might have been considered Lenten penance. All the services were quite beautiful, and if I may brag, the music practices did pay off, because the men sang and chanted very well, especially my husband when he chanted the Exultet at Easter Vigil.

I am still recovering from Holy Week though. Late evenings every night, capped off by a 1:00 return from Vigil, an 8:30 a.m. mass on Easter and a party all afternoon for a friend who just converted. And as you all may remember some of us aren't as young as we used to be.

In there, we also managed to make hot cross buns (which would have been better had I noticed that the 2 year old had turned off the oven) and dye eggs with natural dyes (my favorites were the blue ones dyed with purple cabbage).

Happy Eastertide to you all and let me know if you need my address to send all those birthday packages I know you are itching to get off your hands.