Easter Weekend was a good and mellow experience this year.

I didn’t do much on Saturday, which was okay, because I had a dull headache all day- a carryover from Friday night.

The Lobo baseball team played a weekend series with a good Missouri State team from Thursday through Saturday, and afer the Lobos took the first two, I decided to get some sun and watch the last game of the series early Saturday afternoon. Game 3 didn’t work out quite like games 1 and 2 between the two teams. Missouri State rolled the Lobos 8-0. Still, the Lobo team that has struggled to get wins against top-50 RPI opponents this year took 2 of 3 from the 28th-ranked Bears.

After the Lobo game, I came home and decided it was as good a time as any to clean up in the garage a bit. I had a wall of cardboard boxes in the middle of it I built from boxes collected when I thought I might do some thrift shop to eBay buyer sales of board games. I decided that prospect wasn’t really worth my time half a year or so ago, but the wall remained. This weekend, it was “Mr. Welton, tear down that wall!” And I nicely filled my recycling bin with folded boxes for disposal this week.

And Saturday night was the usual. Cubs baseball, with some cleaning here and there, and blog writing.

This morning, Easter morning, my headache was gone, and I got up and did some additional paper sorting and picking up in the living room, adding more disposables to the recycling bin. I read some in “Ruthless Trust”, a collection of chapters on faith by the always relevant Brennan Manning. Brennan’s writings always reach me when other church voices do not. And naturally, on a day like today, bathed in thoughts on Jesus and the resurrection, I needed to spend some time in reflection and prayer.

After that, late morning, I ran to the store to pick up some Hawaiian sweet rolls that were needed for our afternoon meal. At 12:20, the Cubs started their game with the Pirates. And after cleaning up, I went to my folks house at about 1:30 to help prep for the 2 PM meal.

Joining my hosting parents were myself, my sister and her husband and 2 sons, as well as one of the son’s girlfriends, my sister’s exchange student Merlin, my sister’s mother-in-law, and my friend Brian.

The meal was wonderful, as usual. Trader Joe’s ham, Costco ham and scalloped potatoes, creamy corn from Rudy’s, Mom’s baked beans, Fried Chicken from churches, green beans, rolls, Mom’s deviled eggs, and a range of vegetable finger foods.

After lunch, my sister and her husband and Brian and Merlin and I sat outside under the umbrellas shading our lunch table and wandered in conversation from budget issues to international topics to quantum theory and atomic particulates. Heady stuff for this non-scientist.

Kristi’s boys, with car available, fled home after the dining part was done, and Brian also had to bail, so Frank, Merlin, Kristi, my mom and I moved inside to play through a game of Jamaica, a board game new to all of us, and unique enough as an Easter exercise. You captain a pirate ship in a race around the island of Jamaica. Find treasure! Fight your opponents! But get back to Port Royal first! It took us a while to figure out how to play it, but by the time we finished the game, it made sense, and we enjoyed it. Even without knowing how to play it, it was still a competitive bout for a few in the group.

After the game, everyone packed up and headed out. I stayed over at my folks for a bit longer- to talk, to help pick up a little, to talk on the phone with my brother and his family, to eat a slice of cake with ice cream.

I came home a little after 8 and the Cubs game still needed to be finished, so i put some laundry in the washer and picked the game up where I had left it off. After both starters did exceptional, it was Pittsburgh that found hits and runs in the 8th and 9th inning to win the game 6-1, and with that, the Cubs fell to 6-6 on the year (after a 4-2 start). There’s a long ways to go in the season yet. But the Cubs sit at .500.

I am grateful for a family that claims me and includes me, and a family that also includes friends and in-laws as their own when it comes to these special days. The meal was phenomenal after I skipped breakfast today. The temperatures out this weekend were mild during the day and cool in the evenings- totally comfortable. I got to enjoy a lot of baseball. Maybe too much. But I enjoyed it. And I’m mostly cleaned up, ready for a new work week.

It was a great Easter Sunday and a good weekend.