Happy Easter!

Have a blessed, and joyful Easter celebration. 

He lives!

 

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Dyed and Gone

Well, it finally happened.  I knew that day was coming.  For 10 years I knew it was coming.  It arrived last week, quietly, sneaking in when I wasn’t looking.

“Hey guys, are you ready to color some eggs?” I asked the kids just before Easter weekend.

“Yay!” chimed the princess.  She loves doing stuff like that.

My son was silent. 

“Hon?  Are you in for coloring eggs?” I asked again.

“Um … mom?”

Boom.  There it was.  A decade in the making and you know it’s coming and it still catches you off guard.  You keep thinking, “just one more year … .” 

“It’s okay hon,” I told him.  “I get it.  I do.”

“Do you?  I just … I just feel like such a baby coloring eggs.  I mean, I don’t want to hurt your feelings and if it means a lot to you, I’ll color them with you guys.”

“Oh don’t be silly!” I told him.  “Kids grow out of things all the time!  I knew it was coming!  You keep playing your game, your sister and I will do them.” 

“Thanks mom, for understanding.” 

He hugged me and I kissed him to let him know it really was okay. 

And it is.  Still, you miss the baby days when they’re gone, despite how much you cherish the big kid days when they arrive. 

My other egg coloring buddy remains for a few more years yet so I still have some time.  After that, I’m on my own, I guess. 

I might have to hunt the eggs by myself too, after I hide them. 

 

Happy Easter!

May you have

a blessed

and joyous

Easter!

 

I’ve seen the light!

Well, strings of them actually.

It’s an established fact that one of the biggest reasons why I refuse to get a real tree at Christmas is because of the lights.  I tried it a couple of times, the last time as a young adult, and I swore, never again!  Not that I don’t adore the wonderful fragrance of real Christmas trees, oh I love it lots.  But I hate the needles and I hate the sap and I feel guilty and I hate the needles, and let’s not forget the awful, stabbing needles!  I remember still vacuuming them up in the summer when I was a teen and my mother had gotten a real tree for some reason the previous Christmas. 

So, I don’t do the Christmas tree lights.  Honestly, my way of doing the lights even on a fake tree is to take the whole pile of wires and just kind of toss the mess at the tree like a bridal bouquet.  Catch, Tree!  Which drives my husband absolutely insane.  We both tend to be perfectionists and mostly in similar areas, but this is one where we’re polar opposites.  He loves Rockwell-esque Christmas tree perfection and I’m more of a “no worries, nobody will see that side anyway” kind of tree decorator.  

But this is why we get pre-lit trees.  No muss, no fuss.  Years ago, when we had a big tree, I used to just put it in a giant mattress storage bag, lights, ornaments, tinsel and all, and just haul the thing out to the garage.  Easy-peasy! 

This spring however, we were able to put up an Easter tree, using one of the little colored Christmas trees we picked up last winter.  I took it out of the box and set it on a bookcase and when Darc got home, the first thing he said was, “Did you do the lights?  That looks horrible!”  To which I replied, “I don’t do lights, remember?  That’s how it came out of the box.” 

So, the following weekend, he proceeded to remove the lights from the tree to re-do them the right way.  And I have to say, it was the weirdest strand of lights we’ve ever seen in our lives.  It was basically 2 loops, one slightly larger than the other, with a plug.  There was no beginning or end, it was just these 2 loops.  What the … how are we supposed to work with that?  Well, him, not me!  I didn’t even supervise! 

It must have taken him over an hour to get the lights back on.  The kids may or may not have learned a new colorful word or two.    It was one of those projects that should have been short and sweet, but became frustrating and tedious.  All for just a few lights on a little tree! 

But who makes loops of lights?  It even sounds weird.  Light loops.  Loopy lights.  Looped lights.  *sigh*  Just plain weird.  I get loopy just thinking about it!

Anyway, the lights got done eventually, all by Darc, all by himself, with no help from me.  Because, you know, I don’t do lights*.  And the kids and I got the tree decorated in time for Easter.  Yay! 

*But I will do windows.  Occasionally. 

Sunday’s Coming!

When the lights all died on our little Christmas tree this past season, and we decided to grab the trees that were on sale for dirt cheap at a dept. store, I hadn’t thought further than Christmas.  I know, I know, what do purple and pink have to do with Christmas?  I have no freaking clue, but I love pink and purple, so I grabbed one of each color tree, in addition to the traditional green one.  Did I mention dirt cheap?  I think I paid less for all 3 than I did for the original one that died. 

Flash forward to this spring, when once again Darc and I talked about putting up an Easter tree.  It’s something we’ve wanted to do for YEARS but other things always seemed to get in the way of that.  For one thing, finding a tree to decorate for Easter isn’t anything like picking up a Christmas tree.  No one sells “Easter trees.”  It just isn’t done.  Oh sure, some folks will string up plastic eggs on the trees in their yard, but we wanted something indoors, like a Christmas tree, but … not.   After lots of searches online, I could find little more than leafless branches stuck in a pot, or super expensive metal affairs.  Neither one suited my purpose. 

But then I remembered I had pastel colored Christmas trees!  They were still in the boxes, I’d never even unpacked them, since I didn’t even get them until the post-Christmas sales. 

Okay, now to hunt down Easter ornaments.  Well, a little easier than Easter trees.    Whew!  And I also found some religious ones, to boot.  Lastly, on to the hardware store to pick up some nails. 

The kids and I put it all together yesterday and I think it looks pretty decent.  Now my daughter wants a tree for every holiday!  I confess, the idea is really growing on me. 

At Play

The eggs have been hunted.  They were killed before that, as my kids liked to say, getting giggles over the play on the word “dyed.”  Oh to be 5!  Everything’s funny!  “When are we gonna kill the eggs mom?”  Even more fun than the dyeing was the hunting.  You just never know where those eggs will pop up.   

I think we have just as much fun hiding them as the kids do hunting them.  We make them – the kids – hide in the laundry room, and we can hear their giggles as we tip-toe around the place, trying to figure out where would be good hiding spots for the eggs.  Sometimes, in years past, we’ve forgotten ourselves where we’d hidden an egg or two, so this year I just snapped a shot of each egg as we hid it.  With a 5 year old, I’m still a practitioner of “hiding in plain sight.” 

Now, we will be able to have devilled eggs to our hearts content. 

Darc kept it secret from me until late Thursday night that he had Friday off.  That was a nice surprise.  We got to spend an awesome 3-day weekend together.  Good food, good times, good movies, fun and play and joy. 

Today is back to the grindstone.  The housework that didn’t get done Friday must be addressed today, the regular chores must be tended to.  The kids are still on school break for another week, so that’s cool.    They’ll have lots of fun eating through their Easter candy and bouncing off the walls, lol.  It’s supposed to rain here most of the week so it looks like no outside play for them.  Heh, they can help me vacuum.  😈

I hope you had a great weekend too!

 

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Joyful Easter