Happy Easter

I can say, that I am not religious at all. (I even ate meat on Friday oops)
But I do love times such as easter.
Yus I do love chocolate, what female dosnt, but thats not it.

Its getting together as a family. Everyone dressed tidy and generally sitting down to a nice meal together.
We do, do this at christmas, but christmas everyone is preoccupied with presents and wrapping paper and everything else, plus I always have that whole bad memories thing going on in the back of my mind.
But easter, Easter for me dose not have any real bad memories attached to it and the day isnt taken over with gifts as we only buy really simple things for each other like exchange an egg or a plant or a book.
Todays meal was not as stressful as christmas either. Christmas mum likes to do everything. Roast, mash 4 veg 3 types of meat, pigs in blankets and you literally end up stuffed, but it all takes time to prepare.

Today, we had steak pie, veg and roast potatoes. It is everyones favorite meal and always goes down well. Of course there is always a fight in the kitchen while its being prepared. Mum trying desperately to guard her food and make it all look pretty on the plate. While my sister and my niece try to pinch potatoes and gravy without mum noticing.

So we probably ended up sitting around the big dinner table, all 8 of us for about 3 hours today. I had set dads computer up to run a slide show of all the photos on there as well as randomly playing his music. Different photos mean different things to each person at the table. Like my eldest niece enjoyed the Italian photos from when she holidayed with us, while my younger niece enjoying the canoeing photos from Loire Valley in France, where she was with us just last year. Where we recalled favorite bits like trying to reach the troglodyte caves at the top of the mountain. I nearly passed out getting up there it was so steep and I had to keep stopping, only to get to the top and find the last set of stairs were closed for safety reasons.

It truly was a fascinating place. I would have loved to go into the caves. Maybe sometime in the future. I wouldnt be upto it this year, but its something I might put on my list for next year. I wish I had photos on here to post of the village, but there still on my old laptop. I really need to raid that and get my files off it. It was just weird seeing this big mountain with window holes in it. To think that they had full living villages inside the mountain complete with cattle kept in one section. I mean how on earth do you hollow a suitable space out of mountain without it collapsing all those years ago when there were not many tools. Its awe inspiring.

EDIT: eeeps I just found some of my photos, on the same memory card as my london stuff hehe.

But anyway, back to easter, lol

It was nice to just sit and reminsie. It didnt matter that I wasnt able to be very active or that everyone had to be quiet when I spoke to others could hear me. After that I was pretty exhausted so I sat on my bed for a while, while the kids and played on my wii. I joined in a little. I want those kids to have happy memories of me, of me being fun and someone they can come and talk to about anything. I dont want them to always have memories of visiting ICU or various hospital wards, of me being in and out of surgery or always ill. They will grow up knowing that you can still be just as good a person. I think I'm doing ok at keeping this up. Obviously, its not so easy when I go into hospital for months at a time, but even then, my nephew used to come over to see me on his own and such.

I actually made a video earlier, more for my own records, but just so that I could hear my voice back. I had to put the mic up so my laptop sounds rather noisy but you can hear me, just sounds like I am whispering. I may get the courage to post it at some point.

Anyway, thats enough ramble for tonight.
Time to sleep.
But I shall leave you with a video of my stupid eldest tortoise. He has not yet accepted that he has grown too big to fit under the spaces he used to.