Sunshine, Traditions, and Easter

Family ties are cherished things, forged in childhood days, by love of parents, deep and true, and sweet familiar ways.- Terri Burritt

Easter Sunday - a day to celebrate with our church families and a day to gather with our extended families. Thinking about Easter gatherings seems to fit right in with my Grandmother theme the last few weeks. Did you celebrate the holiday with your family? What traditional things do you do for Easter?

 When my kids were young, we always went to my husband's parents house on Easter. The holiday was very important to my mother-in-law and she expected her children to come "home" on that Sunday. She loved having us all in church with her on Easter. She also enjoyed having a corsage on Easter. Ladies in the church wearing corsages on Easter used to be common, but it's been years since I've seen somebody show up with flowers pinned to their new Easter finery. Didn't see a single hat in church today either. No wait, one of our church kids who just turned two looked adorable in a very cute hat.

But when I was a teenager, hats were required church attire. All the ladies wore hats. I didn't like hats even then, but got by with wearing little veil hats that somebody told me were called whimsies. Gloves were expected too. No matter the weather. I had white gloves and tan gloves. Most people had on new clothes too. The kids in church today had new clothes, but it used to be everybody had a new Easter frock. In past years, I did a lot of sewing to get us ready for Easter. Now I just wear something I already have and don't even think about getting a new dress for Easter. I certainly don't think about sewing a new dress. It's been years since I sewed anything more than a ripped seam. So did you shop for new finery for Easter for yourself or your family? Or maybe fashion an outfit with your own needle?

Now, on Easter, my sons and their families usually make it home for a visit on Easter weekend. They came on Saturday this year and a good thing since we had a beautiful day of sunshine for the Easter egg hunt and then rain this a.m. It's absolutely amazing how fast seven kids can find one hundred plus stuffed plastic eggs. In the picture up top, they're waiting for the word go and posing for the camera. It is almost impossible to get nine kids to sit still and look at the camera all at the same time. But the photo op happened and the Easter egg hunt began. Then because it was such a nice day, we went for a walk. At least seven of the grandkids and one son and me. It's a challenge keeping that many kids moving forward along the same path and in the same direction.

But the grandkids love being on the farm. Walking in the fields is as fun to them as hunting those Easter eggs. Maybe more fun. They like finding new trails in under the trees and playing in dry creek beds. Well, they don't really care if the creek beds are dry or not, but their grammy does. The bottoms of tennis shoes are mud magnets that hold onto that dirt until they're walking around inside the house! But a little dried mud on the floor is a small price to pay for sharing farm fun with the kids. One of the twins did have to be disappointed and not get to go see the cows. He didn't think about asking his pa to take him until his parents were almost ready to go home.

So the weekend was good. Family home Saturday. Sunrise service this a.m. Fellowship breakfast. One son and his family came to church to help me pack our pew this morning. Leftovers for lunch, so I didn't have to cook. A little candy still hanging around that didn't go into a grandkid's sack. Sunshine to walk this p.m.

I am blessed. Did you get to gather with your family today?

Love your family. Spend time, be kind; serve one another. Make no room for regrets. Tomorrow is not promised; today is short. 

                                                                         (Unknown author)

Cousins Equal Fun

Cousins are different beautiful flowers in the same garden.  ~Anonymous

Here are a couple of the beautiful flowers in my garden of grandchildren - two little cousins who enjoyed an early Easter celebration at my house yesterday. We were sort of surprised by the early morning rain. The weather forecasters had said there might be a stray shower. It rained solidly for several hours. My daughter said it must have been the weather guys' April Fool's joke on us. It did mess up the Easter egg hunt we had planned. We hid the eggs in the house which didn't make the hunt very challenging for the older grandkids. The sun did come out and the kids did spend most of the afternoon outside but it was very wet when they were anxiously ready to do the Easter egg hunting. You can only hold off kids eager to hunt candy for so long. My two oldest grandkids didn't hunt eggs. They're growing up. One of them will be graduating from high school this year. How quickly the years zoom past. 

Going "home" to grandma's and grandpa's and playing with cousins can be one of the best memories of childhood. I certainly remember the many good times I had with my cousins when I was a kid. We played in the fields and woods and thought up some neat adventures. In a way, I can attribute my beginning to write to playing with my cousin and my sister. They, along with me, starred in the first book I started writing when I was a kid. We had fun in my imagination too. 

Cousins can be such great ready made friends. Supplied by family with no effort on the child's part. Connected to one another by family ties and sometimes similar backgrounds. My children had great fun with their cousins, and it's good to see their children playing together now. My children got to see their cousins often since my sisters and I live in the same community. My grandkids don't live close together. So they don't see each other but a few times a year, but they know how to have fun together when the opportunity pops up.  

Did you have cousins you played with as kids? Have the bonds of friendship endured through the years? I don't see my cousins much any more. A couple of them live in California and I doubt I'll ever see them again. But the memories of good times together linger and bring smiles. 

Thanks for reading!

Easter Fun with the Kids and Mom

The grandkids were posing with my mom here, but Mom and the little one were more interested in the eggs she'd found out in the yard. Mom really loves watching the littlest ones. The bigger ones have too much energy sometimes for her. We had a busy Easter weekend with my daughter and her husband home to visit and one family of the grandkids here for Easter. Then there were the two services at church . We do a Sunrise Service where our pastor takes on the personna of one of the First Century witnesses to the Resurrection. This year he was Thomas. Always an enlightening message, but it keeps me moving to get something cooked for our fellowship breakfast and get dinner cooked for home. Last year all the grandkids were here and I thought I had it planned out. Put a couple of dishes in my oven and intended to set the automatic timer for it to come on before we got home from church. Uh-oh! I guess I just turned the oven on with no timer working. My macaroni, apple, and potato dishes were crispy black when I got home, but at least the house wasn't full of smoke or worse in flames. This year I just came home in between services. Gas is expensive, but so are houses!!

We did have a nice day. The kids even hid eggs and made us adults go hunting for the hard boiled eggs they had decorated. I was about as bad at finding eggs now as when I was a kid. I was always that kid who maybe found one egg at an Easter egg hunt. Just not fast enough even back then. :) But my daughter and her little weiner dog found a few. Poor little dog has arthritic joints and so gets carried around a lot. He likes being up high. I had all my dogs out of the egg hiding field. My big old chocolate lab is really good at finding eggs and crunching those plastic shells to get to the candy so he has to be banned from participating. We were glad the rain stopped long enough to do the hunt outside. The big kids are always just as happy to get the plastic eggs that rattle - coins inside - as the ones with candy. But the little one, she was after the chocolate.

Missed having all the family here. One son is away on business and the other son and his family were taking in the sights at Disney World. So they were having a great time too. But it was good that Mom felt like coming out to be part of our day.

Hope you had a beautiful Easter day with blessings hopping up all around you. I had a blessing of some great news this a.m. about Angel Sister possibly getting some print publicity. I'll be sure to let you know more about that later. My goal this week is to redo my home page on my website, write a bunch of words for my new Shaker book, and work on getting out a newsletter. I have this wonderful post from Suzanne Woods Fisher that I'm going to put here on the blog, but I want to send out a newsletter first so I can share the fun with as many people as possible. Then of course, I want to rejoice in my everyday blessings - a loving family, a beautiful place to live, the return of the hummingbirds, my dog friends, my church, a working computer, reading friends, and so many more.

How about you? Did you have a blessed Easter? Thanks for reading.