Hippity Hoppity Easter's On It's Way

Dying Eggs 2007

Easter Sunday 2007

Someday they'll appreciate the sacrifices I made to make sure they coordinated!  

Easter Sunday 2008

Please hurry up and take the picture so we can eat our ding-dang hollow bunny!

2008

MMM!

Yes, we still exist.  And yes it is still tough.  And yes, that's why my blog posts get written in my head while I shower but never make it into cyberspace.  So, here's the scoop...

It's Easter!  Hooray.  I love all things Easter.  I love the fact that I serve a Risen Savior and that I have so many reasons to celebrate.  I love the fact that this is the time of year when we frequently hear our Lord referenced as Hosanna- that's one of my favorite names for him.  

I am also transparent enough to admit that I also love marshmallow Peeps- actually I strongly prefer the rabbits over the chicks, which my kids think is weird.  I can't help it, it's the ears.  I especially love them when they are just a smidgeon stale.  It's weird, I know.  

Oh, and Reese's eggs, need I say more?  I can't eat them without thinking of my dear friend Nancy whom I met in the 7th grade.  She was painfully shy and I talked WAY too much (imagine that).  We were a match made in heaven.  We were the best of friends in junior high, high school, and college.  We married college roommates, both of whom are employed full-time in ministry now.  We don't get to see each other often, and I miss her.  But, never more than at Easter.  That's because we had a tradition.  A goofy jr. high sort of tradition. Every year we would share our first Reese's egg of the season.  We would cut it in 1/2 long ways- to be fair.  And we would dig in and officially kick off the Easter season.   We did this for years.  In fact, I think I had been married for several years before I ate my first egg without her.  Nance, if you're reading this, have an egg for me!

Growing up, every year one of my mom's sisters and her girls would come from across town and spend Easter weekend with us.  I have tons of happy memories from those weekends.  Like the year my cousin Nadia woke up on Easter morning and started screaming that she'd gone blind.  Turns out she just had developed a bad case of pink eye which crusted her eyes shut-gross huh?  Then there was the year that her sister Charity spent like an hour searching for her Easter Basket before she finally dissolved into a heap of tears.  Turns out Aunt Alice hid it in the oven.  And every year, without fail, we colored Easter Eggs.  We always did several dozen, though my father was the only one who actually ate them. Of course, he couldn't eat them until after someone had hidden them and we'd searched for them.  We never found the last of them until they started to stink in the backyard about mid-June.   Oh, those are happy memories.

 

Now my Easter weekends have changed.  Instead of searching for baskets, I'm now the one hiding them.  Nadia and Charity and Aunt Alice still come spend the night with us, but now they come on airplanes from Manhattan and mini-vans from Cincy instead of across town.   We still color eggs, but now my husband helps eat them.  And now, instead of simply doing a backyard egg hunt, Ryan and I help coordinate a church egg hunt to the tune of 10,000 eggs.   It's my hope that my kiddos will look back on Easter with the happy memories I do.   Now, if I can just remember not to turn on the oven until after all of the baskets have been found, we'll be good!