This weekend is Easter weekend. Some of our chicks are returning home to roost if only for a few days for the holiday, while one of our chicks is in North Carolina at a High School FIRST competition (safe travels Logan.)
As the kids get older, celebrations tend to adapt. All the hoopla, all the decorations tend to get a little muted, distilled down to the activities with the most meaning and memories.
When they were younger, the Easter Bunny would leave baskets for the kids that they could only find by following a series of clues hidden in color coded eggs. The non-readers would get picture clues (the stove, the mailbox) while the older ones would get riddles that needed to be solved in order to get to the next clue. Some years it would take a half hour of running around before you got to your reward.
Again, with age, the Easter Bunny started sending the kids outside the house (often in Spring mud) as well as to each floor of our 3 story house. Distance between clues became an important part of the search. Preparation for Easter morning meant always knowing where your boots were. I guess that bunny figured that if you were going to get a boatload of candy you might as well start working it off.
This year, Marc and two of the boys will be at a Gaming convention in Boston (PAXEast) and Logan will be in transit from NC to home. That means I’ll be home with only three kids.
It’s been 13 years since I only had three kids in the house, it will be a vacation, almost like I’m single again. I’m planning on taking the kids to a restaurant and a good friend of ours (Hi Emily) is going to join us for the day.
We’ll spend time with the chickens, try our hand at rolling a White House egg or two, search for pussy willows to put on the table, and in general will relax for the day. Heck, I might even be able to get some reading in.
It will be a bit of a different celebration than we’ve had in other years but as my kids know, some things will just never change.
A word of advice to my kids who will be home, even though half of our flock will not be here for Easter, if I were you, I’d still make sure I knew where my boots were first thing in the morning.
Wouldn't be Easter without official White House Eggs to roll
