Easter Memories

Happy Easter everyone.  Reading Doug Peterson's blog post about Easter this morning brought back so many memories. When we were kids, mom would poke a hole in ends of the raw eggs with a darning needle and then we had to blow all the egg 'guts' out into a bowl before dying the eggs. She would use the eggs for cooking scrambled eggs for breakfast for all of us.  I can remember how hard it was to empty all the eggs and my brother and I would complain that we were going to 'blow our brains out.'

I have two brothers - one is 2 years younger than me and one 7 years younger.  To make the egg hunt fair, mom would hide the chocolate eggs in bunches of three and when you found one, you had to put one in each person's basket.

Growing up, my girls coloured eggs every year but we only hid the chocolate eggs. I put the little foil chocolate eggs in those plastic eggs so if one did get missed, it didn't melt on the carpet and the cat didn't find it and try to eat it. We also hid coins in some of the eggs and I think the girls liked those ones better than the chocolates. The got lots of chocolate from their grandparents and other family, but cash was in short supply when you're a kid unless the tooth fairy had paid a recent visit.

Then it was off to church and a family dinner with all the cousins.

When they were little, they would use the plastic eggs and the baskets and play 'egg hunt' for days after Easter. One of them would hide the eggs, then the other would have to run around the house to find them. Great memories!

Each year I host Easter dinner for my extended family.  Not everyone can make it this year - three of my nieces and my brother have to work. Some years Easter is right around the same time as university and college exams, which adds an extra level of stress.

This will be our first time hosting in our smaller home, so it's going to be cozy. I wonder sometimes what will happen as the girls get older, and begin families of their own. Will there come a time when our big extended family no longer gets together for Easter, Christmas and New Years? As a kid, my dad's extended family got together all the time - Christmas, New Years Day, my grandparents' anniversary, Mothers Day, Fathers Day and Thanksgiving. I hope our generation can keep this family tradition alive for years to come.

What are your Easter Memories? Did you dye eggs with those little packs from the store with the dye and the little metal holder? Easter egg hunts with chocolate eggs or did you hide the dyed eggs? What are your family traditions?

From http://en.davno.ru/easter/easter-6.html