Easter Memories

As a child, I always loved Easter. I had a grandmother that believed every girl needed a new dress for Easter, so each year, she made sure I had a pretty new dress to wear to church. Even after I was an adult and married, Gran took me shopping every year until she grew too frail to shop any longer.

After church on Easter Sunday, we all gathered at Gran's house for dinner, and Gran made the kids little Easter baskets out of green plastic strawberry baskets with pipe cleaner handles. She filled the baskets with green Easter grass, one of the crocheted chicken egg-holders that made an appearance every year, and lots of jelly beans. She also hid eggs for us in the back yard- real ones. One year, we couldn't find one of the eggs and she couldn't remember where she put it. We finally discovered it by the smell it created a couple of months later: it was stuck in the top pipe of the frame for the backyard swing. Ugh! She hid plastic eggs after that.

My children will have memories from this weekend of Easter Egg Hunts (the little ones had a freezing hunt at the church in the morning and the two older ones had a freezing hunt in the evening at Randa's Magical Kingdom (it's her home, but if you could visit it, you would know what I meant!); dying eggs together on Saturday morning (including the great Boiled Egg Debate among all the "engineers" in our home: which boiling method produces the best eggs?); and Easter baskets filled with candy, stuffed bunnies, and for John Mark, a chicken that does the chicken dance.

But I am glad that in addition to all these things, my children will have memories like the ones from our church family's celebration today: remembering Jesus' life, death and resurrection through song and scripture, Family communion and baby blessings, followed by a meal with friends. It was a perfect, beautiful Easter Sunday.