Easter moments

[dropcap]E[/dropcap]aster. Chocolate. Break from school/work. New life. New hope. New mercies.

This is what the story of our Easters have looked like in our little life since Willis was born:

[caption id="attachment_6890" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Willis in a kimono on the table. Totally normal Easter meal.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_6891" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Mom always cheats at Scrabble- Willis was totally helping her. Grams, sigh.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_6892" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Aiden, Willis and Koen. There's a whole set of barebum photos to go with this, that I'll save for their wedding days.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_6897" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Kyla, we need to start doing these photo shoots again of the little hooligans.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_6893" align="aligncenter" width="400"] My pint-sized princess in her whole pint-sized glory. I wrote a post about that on my friend's blog last week. To read it, click Lucia's picture[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_6896" align="aligncenter" width="400"] The year with all the snow.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_6898" align="aligncenter" width="600"] I think they were playing spin the bottle? But the kid version..not the creepy version.[/caption]





[caption id="attachment_6901" align="aligncenter" width="450"] Last year- the year we threw Brother Rob a fake 30th birthday party over Easter. Oh, the trickery.[/caption]

Easter. Chocolate. Break from school/work. New life. New hope. New mercies.

If there has been a common thread in our Easters of the past, it has been one of family.  We are always surrounded by our people and it has become so much of a norm in our world, that it is what is expected of us.  So once in awhile, it is nice to break the mold.

This year for Easter, the kids requested that we stay home.  No farm, no Prince Albert, nope. Home.  And I was totally fine with that.  Sometimes it's nice to have a break and play grown up in my own house.  I had a moment on Sunday afternoon as I prepped all the food for supper. While chopping carrots, I felt sadness as I zipped around the kitchen.  The apron, the cookbooks, the music I was humming, everything made me feel so grown up and I just missed my Grandmothers and being a kid in their homes.

[Tweet "Do you ever have those moments when you feel like time is getting away from you and you start to wonder how you ended up in this place?"] A kitchen of my own? Kids? A holiday meal to be responsible for? I swear sometimes I feel like that 8 year old girl, trying to sleep in her Grams' basement with her smelly cousins on the mattress besides her, trying to talk to her about NKOTB or something and being so scared of the Easter Bunny that mom had to come downstairs to calm me and tell me the truth about (this ferocious) bunny I had imagined.  And then just like that it's me, lying captive in bed with my 8 year old son Easter's eve and he's terrified to go to sleep because of the creepy Easter bunny and I don't blame him at all, so I lay there and cuddle him until he falls asleep.  But the whole time I am just in awe of the fact that I'm allowed to adult and parent and these little guys are all mine to shape and mold and to freak the hell out.  Just kidding. I told him I'd leave a note for the bunny to not go in his room.

Time is funny, isn't it.  Well, especially time mixed with holidays and those aromas that remind you of being a kid.  And here we are, grown ups.  Responsible for raising these little monsters and creating all these great memories for them.  I wonder if they will remember the Easter that we stayed home.  I hope they do.  I hope they remember all the cards and games of Monopoly played and how Nana and Papa wanted to see them, so they came and joined us for supper.  And how Mom made all these weird foods because of some strange thing she challenged herself to do with 2 cookbooks and how great it felt to go outside in the sun and the melting snow and how the Easter bunny came Sunday morning but when we went to Church, he CAME BACK and hid all the eggs again so they had to search them out a second time.  That rascally rabbit.

You know, being grown up isn't all that bad.  I like this little story that I'm writing.

*This post has been powered by Prosecco.  Thanks, Katie for making me dream of it until I found it.  You can read her prosecco post here on the Blended Blog. We had peach bellinis with Easter Sunday supper and I wrote this post fueled on the powers of having to finish off the bottle...because it was opened and COULDN'T go to waste.  Stay tuned on Friday for my Food Goals and I will tell ya just how good our Easter Sunday supper was!