Monday, April 13, 2009

Happy Easter

Well, I don't have any Easter pics to show you, because we didn't take any. We were too busy just trying to get to Lonoke without having to use the boat. Wow...did it ever rain!

For every year that I can truly remember, we have always celebrated Easter at my grandparents. Both of them have gone to Heaven and my uncle now lives in that house. He and his wife graciously still host Easter for the entire family. I am not talking about a group of 20 people. From year to year it has varied, but most years its been somewhere between 75-125 people and thats not an exaggeration--and it could be more than that...I am just guessing. I usually know about half of them and can tell you how I am related to them. The truth is that I am related to the majority of them...but its just too hard to remember everyone when you only see them once a year or once every couple of years. This year, the gathering was only about 25 people. To our utter surprise, Kale and his brand new cousin (3 weeks old) were the only kids who came! Everyone either decided to stay home or attend Easter with the "other family". It was soooos strange.

Part of the annual Easter celebration is the easter egg hunt. Since I was little, we have all been tasked with bringing eggs--some plastic, some real. The plastic eggs get filled with candy or a numbered piece of paper. There is a number for every kid. Different amounts of money are assigned to each number. We break the kids into two groups--under 6 and and over 6. There is a large prize egg for each group. The large prize egg contains the most money. Since you don't know which number is assigned to the largest prize, you only find out who found the large prize egg when all the egg hunting is over. Each kid is allowed only one prize egg.

So, back to yesterday. Its Kale and a 3 week old baby. So, for the first time in all the history of Easter in my life, there wasn't an egg hunt. It was pouring rain. Kale could not have cared less about not finding eggs. He didn't even know it was an option. Ha! He and his Mema have been "practicing" finding eggs in the yard, and we will probably let him "hunt" later this week when the weather is nice and we can get some pictures.

A while after lunch, we left in hopes of getting Kale to take another nap since his first nap was only 45 minutes. There are days when thats all he needs, and yesterday was one of them! We needed a nap, but he didn't care! He snacked on ham like it was going out of style and eventually ate some spaghettio rings for dinner. He eventually went to bed with Mema Nana and with the exception of one little whine somewhere in the night, he slept until 4am. Mema Nana declared that he was going to have ham and spaghettio rings every night!

In the meantime, my dad had a little drama. He had a gig on Saturday night, so he got up on Sunday morning to drive to Lonoke. Thanks to the rain and stalled traffic from a wreck, he sat in traffic while we ate lunch. He eventually made it. He planned to come to our house for a bit before heading home. When he went out to his truck, it gave him trouble. He told mom that he thought his alternator was going out and that he should head straight home. The truck went dead at Mayflower. A wrecker from Alma came to get him and we think he got his insides quite jostled on the trip home. Apparently the wrecker did not have "air ride" seats. Poor dad!

Whew...and that was Easter...