Easter!

Today was spent celebrating Easter.

First off, C and R took me to the local Catholic church, St. Susanna, for the morning mass.  It was a stark contrast from Saint Paul, MN where there is an overabundance of parishes.  In Saint Paul, where they are downsizing, there are over 12 churches in a 20 mile radius and several of them have only older populations where the church is only half full at best.  Compare to St. Susanna, where they were overfilled, a very evenly spread out age demographic, and the only Catholic church in a 20 mile radius.

Next, I took Etsy out for a walk and called my parents and my sister.  Then, almost right on cue, J called me.  She left me an Easter basket that C dropped off for me with both the book "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" and two small LEGO sets.  J spoils me rotten!  I am totally taking her out to a really nice dinner when I get to Germany.  She had no church bells to listen to today, which I found curious and was a little saddened to hear.  She pretty much spent the day alone, which hurts my heart.  I wish I could have been there for her.  She did chat with her parents after our conversation, so that was nice.

JJ, J, A, C, T, J, N, A, A, L, C, and R (did you get all of that? :) ) showed up for Easter at C and R's house.  C was extra sweet and got recipes from my mom so that some of my family Easter traditions could be present for me at Easter meal.  She made german potato salad, ham, and "easter nests" -  a marshmallow creme and M&M dessert - along with quiche, scalloped potatoes, asparagus, broccoli, and cauliflower, and JJ brought olive-cheese bread (quite good), the ham aforementioned, and cheesecake.  Needless to say, we were all very stuffed.

Etsy did not handle the commotion well.  I may have been a little lax with her training due to the different environment.  Today was a lesson to me of what I need to further train her on and what also to anticipate.

After lunch, I chatted with in-law relatives while most flew kites with the kids.  It was a nice windy day for it.  Golf later developed and T decided to cut some dead tree branches down.  J, T's girlfriend, became very highly sought after by A and L for storytime...I think they went through 3 or 4 books!

I then finished watching the final round of the Master's Golf Tournament with R.  It was a special tournament,  with the fourth double-eagle swung in the entire tournament's history and a sudden death showdown at the end which was only the ninth in the tournament's history.

I then watched a 60 Minutes story on the status of the European Euro and why the crisis in Europe is happening and what is anticipated to happen next.  I found it interesting that most analysts are confident that Greece will completely crumble financially, it's just a matter of when and what effect it will have on the rest of Europe.  Also, Germany is the most stable country in all of Europe right now.  The reason why it concerns America is that if Greece's collapse causes a European collapse, then America will certainly be affected in some way.  It's crazy and exciting to know that J and I will be smack in the middle of it all.

I also narrowed down where my Jaeger line ancestor's came from via ancestry.com today.  Herman Jaeger, born in 1844, was born in Prussia and entered into the United States via Quebec, Canada between 1859 (on his naturalization card) and 1867 (in one of the US Censuses).  His wife, Mary, born in 1847, was born in Mecklenburg and actually came into the US much earlier, around 1853, but never received naturalization papers.  If Prussia and Mecklenburg sound unfamiliar, here is a picture of Germany around 1871.

Mecklenburg is now a state of Germany, but Prussia got heavily hacked up after the first and second World Wars.  While Prussia pretty much spanned all of Germany at one point, it's probably a safe bet that Herman lived near one of Mecklenburg's borders.  How funny would it be if he was actually from Rhineland?  I would really technically be going back to the motherland then!