Easter

On the Eve of Easter I’m usually up late hiding baskets.  I connect a long piece of yarn to each basket, and then weave it about the house, finally attaching it to each kidlet’s bed.  All four colors of yard turn the house into a gigantic web of yarn.  By the end I can barely crawl to my bed, there is so much string to navigate.  When I started this a decade or so ago, I didn’t realize that it would become a tradition that is highly anticipated each year.  It’s actually kind of a pain.  In fact Dr. Peds didn’t even come home from the hospital to sleep on Easter Eve because he knew he would have to navigate so much string when he stepped in the door.  Every year I suggest that maybe we could be done with string.  I am loudly outvoted.  So string it is.

This year I did a really good job.  I ran out of string and couldn’t make it back to the Devious Snail’s place of slumber, so I just hid the end of his color of string and left him a note that said, “You’re orange.  Good luck.”  He had to use some great logical deductive reasoning to find his basket since he didn’t know where to start following the orange string.  I wind everyone’s string around one leg of the piano, and I think The Banana’s went around about 17 times, and out in every different direction.  She literally sat under the piano for 30 minutes trying to decipher her string.  Ironically, her basket was hidden right next to where she was sitting under a drum the whole time.  I couldn’t help but giggle.

On Easter we went to two different churches, and some of the kids helped out at the pancake breakfast at our usual church.  The morning was filled with worship and prayer.  We came home and the dreary, rainy weather made for a perfect napping opportunity.  In the evening, however, we had to have our traditional egg hunt, where eggs are filled with coupons, maybe some spare change, and other interesting treasures.  This activity is also highly anticipated, and believe me, they were every bit as excited to search for eggs as they were when they were five.  YaYa struggled for a long time to get an egg out of a bird house that it was hiding in, only to discover that the egg was filled with . . . road salt.  It jingled just like quarters inside an egg.  Ha!

Coupon trading after the egg hunt went on for 45 minutes.  There was so much bargaining.

There were many coupons that were highly valued, but some of my favorite coupon treasures inside the eggs were:

• Eat spinach!  As much as you want!
• Mom will read poetry to you for twenty minutes.
• Dad will explain your math.  Again and again.
• Mom will sing operatically for you for thirty minutes.
• Free senior pictures!  Taken by Mom!