Easter

Easter outfits - both hand-me-downs from friends!

Last year, Rick and I sat down to figure out our entire family holiday debacle.  Both our families live in town, which means we have to try to schedule everything so we see everyone.  The problem is that my family does things the same way every year and Rick's family does things differently every year and doesn't generally plan things until the week before, which equals extreme frustration on our parts.  Throw in kids, one of whom does not function without at least a 3 hour nap, and you get two people ready to wash their hands of the whole ordeal and hunker down on the living room floor with the kids, a bag of popcorn and a movie.

But, of course, we can't.  And we don't really want to.  We just want it all to work without anyone getting upset.

And really, why would we want to deprive people of seeing this sweet girl?

So, as Rick and I are sitting down trying to figure everything out, we made a tough decision.  We decided that, since my mom, dad, and brother always do Christmas early, we would skip Christmas with my dad's family on Christmas day and spend all morning and afternoon with Rick's family.  This was a HUGE sacrifice for me.  I have ALWAYS been with these people at 11:30 on Christmas day. My big family Christmas is green-bean casserole. Waffle cookies. Dodging the aunts who will inevitably be making their rounds to find someone who hasn't been Santa yet (I, of course, have already paid my dues, but Rick has yet to do it, stating that he can't fit in the Santa outfit). My mom playing Christmas carols on the old out-of-tune piano in the corner. My uncles talking football and picking on each other. My cousins, who invariably have grown two inches and become even more strikingly beautiful. And on and on and on.

It was a tough decision to make, but it was made easier by this: we would ALWAYS do Easter with my big family.  No matter what.

Shane Easter goes something like this:

• rush out of church - which for me means get the kids, take a quick family picture before we change clothes, try to keep them in the same place long enough to get changed into play clothes, and then try to keep them in the same place until Daddy gets done putting away guitars, shutting down computers, and powering off projectors, and then piling in the car

 

• drive out to Aunt Jessie's - she lives on a big farm near Auburn
• park - since we are usually late comers, we park a ways down the line, we get halfway there, and we realize we forgot something, so Daddy has to go back and get it. This year it was his phone
• gather - we greet family, they ooo and ahhh over how big the kids are

And I get to ooo and ahh over this girl!

My cousin Shane and his fiance Dessa - getting married in June!

With Aunt Tina :)

• pray - we all pile into the house - some are on the stairs, some are still outside, some are holding hands, some are holding babies - and we sing the Doxology.  We do this because my great-grandpa used to pray and after he died, no one felt like trying to fill his shoes. So we sing the doxology, which my cousins somehow still don't know the words to, and the less-reverent among us giggle while they try to look like they know all the words
• EAT - the food is always the same food, always in the same serving dishes, and always in the same location on the counters.  Start with mashed potatoes, then cream corn or gravy (depending on what you want on your potatoes), then meats (ham, brisket, meatloaf), then casseroles (taco is Rick's favorite), then veggies (my favorite is my aunt's layer salad...YUMMMY!), then fruits and breads.  Then my aunt standing at the end of the counter with an Easter-colored Solo cup and a sharpie, asking for my drink order. Then find a table and chow down. Then go back for dessert, which has its own counter all to itself and is covered with delicious Kansas Dirt Cake, pies, and a birthday cake for whichever Shane family member is celebrating a birthday that day, because there are so many people that someone always is.  I wish I had taken a picture here.  It really is pretty amazing that my aunt can pull all that together.
• Play - this is the fun stuff.  I'll let the pictures do the typing here:

  

  The tree swing in the front yard :)

  

  Playing on the tractor in the barn

  

  Climbing on the hay bales...something I used to do with my cousins when I was his age!

  

  Heading out to the pond

  

  Where, somehow, Rick and I ended up the only two adults with like, 6 kids!

  

  Cousins....awwwww!

  

  These two girls are going to be such good friends!

  

  Easter Egg Hunt - we found a killing!

  

  Lucy...not so much, but she had fun
  
  

  We also have an egg toss and a marshmallow fight, but somehow I didn't get any pictures of those. Which is a shame, because they are a BLAST.

  
  

  I know it's pretty obvious to say you love your family, but I really do love my family.  There is something about bringing your children back to the places you used to go and the things you used to do when you were a kid, like pet the goats, play tag on the hay bales, and finding chocolate Easter eggs that you knew full well your great aunts hid three minutes ago.

  
  

  And this is probably my favorite family event of the year.