Cheese braids are baked. Cardomom bread, too.

The table is set with my china--and it is beautiful, I must say. A set of tumbling bunnies serve as our centerpiece; there is a gift-wrapped book at each child's place.

Grinds and water are in the coffee maker (timers are a wonderful thing). The fruit salad is cut up and in a lovely bowl given by her (and her husband) as a wedding gift. All I'll have to do in the morning is pour half and half into the creamer, cut up the cheese braid, and move said bowl from refrigerator to table.

A little green seersucker dress hangs next to my white skirt; both are ironed crisp. The great $7 find--a new dress shirt for Daniel--is nearby, and by that are the boys' outfits.

Baskets--one green, one yellow, one blue--are hidden in the laundry room, and clues to lead toddlers to them are tucked around the house.

We will share the early hours as a family and then leave 5 minutes for the short drive to the church in our [almost] backyard. After church we will join my family for a great and raucous meal.

His sacrifice--his awful death on the cross--means life for me. The more I celebrate, the more wonderful it becomes.

Only He can make death such a beautiful thing, for He has defeated it.

Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality. But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, "Death is swallowed up in victory." "O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?" The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.