How was your Easter? With the four day Easter break so early this year the weather was warm, and the rain last night made it even better – the water tank was getting low. I am thinking back over the last four days, feeling refreshed and wondering what contributes to that feeling … we all know that time away from work doesn’t necessarily leave us feeling energised.

I started keeping a diary when I was 14 or 15 years old. In those days the notes were just records of activity, no reflections or opinion. Maria gives me a hard time that not only was my diary-taking a simple list of activity … it tended to be the same set of things repeated week after week. But my teenage years were happy ones .. full of simple pleasures. And so was this last long weekend.

Reading: I wasn’t up for sleep one night, so spent half the night reading Harrison Owen’s book on Open Space Technology.

Swimming: Usual drill except I took Johanna with me and she swam in indoors while I looked at the black line.

Bike riding: 3 times Johanna and I (once with Rachel) peddled along the Merri trail which winds its way through parklands in the northern suburbs and past our house.

Cleaning: the shower is my job

Cooking: Inspired by Jamie Oliver’s experience cooking for local Italians who turned their noses up at his fancy flavours, I slow baked some tomatoes with oregano from our garden and tossed it with some ‘rags’ of home made pasta. Wonderful.

Friends: We visited some friends who were camping down at Cumberland River. It seemed half of Melbourne was down there, naturally there were thousands at Bells Beach for the Pro surfing, but Anglesea and Lorne were also packed. CR is a superb spot … our friends have been going to the same spot with a bunch of other families for years. Two of our girls joined them this year.

Surfing: Of course, being down the surf coast meant I had to spend a couple of hours trying to catch some waves.

TV: Maria and I watched an old movie, Thirteen Days, the story of how close we came to nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis.

Music: Our family room has a computers, TV and music, each with capacity to listen via headphones, so we can be together rather than separated. While Maria was reading beside me and a couple of the kids were on the computers I found myself watching/ listening to a music channel counting down the ‘best 1000 songs of all time’!! I spent an hour and a half thoroughly immersed in quality songs, the words and music reaching out of the box and grabbing my soul.

I even washed the cars ….

And went grocery shopping,

And then yesterday we ripped out the tomato plants to make way for some winter vegies.

There is an old Kellogg’s Corn Flakes advertisement that bore the tag line, ‘the simple things in life are often the best.’ My Easter was full of simple things.

I hope you had a good one too.