EASTER 2011

Yes, I know it’s the end of June.

I was talking to some friends about Easter at my mom and dad’s place and I figured that as there might not be another one (at least not at that house) I really ought to do a post about it even though it’s a couple of months late.

Yes, my mother has an Easter Tree

I think my mom divides the year into Christmas, Christmas prep, Easter, Easter prep and Hallowe’en (Dad's in charge of the Hallowe'en prep). To say she loves the holidays would be a bit of an understatement I think. But Easter at their house is something else. I really don’t remember how it started, or when. I have some vague memories of my brother and I hunting around the house we grew up in but it was nothing like what goes on today.

It must have been sometime while I was in high school and my cousins, who are all years younger than my brother and I, were all wee ones. Start adding some friends of mom and dad’s who didn’t have other places to go on Easter, and then some friends who’d come by before or after their own family obligations. Add some of my brother’s friends, then some of ours. Then throw in everyone’s kids now and it’s a bit crazy. I think at its apex there were easily 150 plus people through the house on Easter Sunday. It’s gone down a bit to a more manageable 60-70 or so with about an even split between adults and kids I think. 

When I send out our email invite to our friends I always include something along the lines of “Easter Egg Hunt – so long as you define “egg” as chocolate.” Anyway, back to being in high school. I remember waking up at 6 a.m. to help Dad sort out the chocolate. We would have spent Friday and Saturday labelling all of it and then a couple of hours on Sunday planting it all around the yard, cars, window ledges, bird feeder, tree etc. Yep, you read that right. LABELLED. Kids have to find 12-14 pieces of chocolate. Adults get 6-8. There’s no way to actually HIDE 800+ pieces of chocolate so it isn’t that you have to find any 14 pieces of chocolate. You have to find YOUR 14 pieces.

 

We’ve had Easter in the snow (actually my third favourite kind of Easter) and Easter in the rain (not as bad as it sounds but not ideal). We’ve had cold and crisp Easters (my second favourite kind) and we’ve had blazingly hot Easter (the absolute WORST kind of Easter – everything melts. It’s the only time we actually didn’t place anything and just handed out bags of chocolate. No fun at all). And, more often than not, we’ve had Easters like this year – a little cool, a little overcast, but nice enough to eat outside. My favourite kind – perfect.

Hunting for chocolate

Getting lunch ready

Hanging with Dad

Q and Uncle George

This year was obviously also Q’s first Easter. He was a champ. He got passed around from family member to friend and on again. He maintained his standing as the world’s easiest baby by hardly fussing at all and sleeping in his stroller in the backyard.