Easter

We have a tradition at our house on Easter. It's centered around the kids... from youngest to oldest! Everyone participates in this fun event. What do we do?

Roll colored Easter eggs down the hill.

The eggs are boiled, colored, and carefully placed in the grass filled wooden bowl. We sit them on the counter for all to admire while we eat dinner. Afterwards, we have an Easter egg hunt. Then, at the conclusion of the hunt, the kids get their colored eggs and roll them down the grassy hill in front of the house.

All fun and games... rolling, chasing... rolling, tumbling... 

Until... crash! It wasn't the bump on Emmy's behind that hurt. It was the egg that cracked!

Such a sad little face.

The last thing little Em expected was a broken egg. She went to big sister for sympathy. She told her sad, sad, story.

No promptings here! Big sister made it all better and traded her unbroken egg for the broken egg. What a joy to watch. I'd say that was the truest kind of sisterly love! 

All's well that end's well!

Writing prompt #2: Easter recap.

Writing prompt #4: Write a blog post inspired by the word: break

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Mama Kat's Pretty Much Famous Writer's Workshop

The Easter Egg

We can't celebrate Easter without the egg! They just go together.

Eggs are used to celebrate Easter or springtime. We hard boil eggs and fancy them up with a variety of coloring methods. The oldest tradition is to dye and paint chicken eggs. 

We also celebrate Easter with chocolate eggs or plastic eggs filled with jelly beans, malted milk eggs, marshmallow eggs, and other eggs shaped candies.

Now that I am the grandma, Easter celebrations are planned around the grand kids. Traditions of celebrating Easter have remained much the same, from days of my youth to now. We have had to adjust and change the way we do some things because of where we live. The closest thing we have to the desert is the Golden Spike. And not all our children get to be with us at Easter because of the distance. But one thing is certain...

We love to celebrate the Easter egg at our house!

It starts a couple of days before Easter. We get together, cook and color eggs.

My favorite way to color eggs is with good old reliable food coloring and vinegar. Writing the kids name on the hard boiled eggs with crayon creates a wax barrier and remains on the egg after coloring. The kids really like this.

Last year we tried a new way of coloring. It is messy, but the colors are lively and fun. I would suggest placing a plastic table cloth on the table before starting.

Squirt a pile of shaving cream onto a paper plate. 

Add a couple of drops each of different colors of food coloring.

Mix together.

Roll egg in shaving cream mixture.

Wipe off cream, using a paper towel. 

That's it!

What do we do with Easter eggs?

Hunt for them. 

Roll them down the hill.

Learn about the true meaning of Easter!

Teaching the kids about the resurrection of Jesus Christ, using plastic eggs, is a meaningful way to celebrate Easter. For "Resurrection Eggs" click here.

Although I love making and eating the traditional Easter egg, I love even more....

chocolate peanut m&m's, reese's peanut butter eggs, and malted robin eggs!

The case of the missing Easter egg

Easter eggs can be quite important in a child's life. I was talking to my daughter on the phone this morning about her plans for Easter. We got on the subject of Easter eggs. She told me a story that made me laugh. I don't know if I really never knew this or I just can't remember. But... it's a good story.

A story. Logan, 1991. Easter had come and gone. The Easter eggs were all eaten, or so I thought! Two of my daughters who are only 18 months apart, were joined together like twins. They could come up with the most concocted ways to play. Amie was 13. Shaniel was 12. They each kept their favorite Easter egg. Amie's was blue. Shaniel's was purple. They were beautiful! They couldn't think of eating these beautiful eggs they had created. They made a special place to keep them in their rooms. They were their children! They played with them after school. At night, they put them to bed, covering them with washcloths.

Other activities soon distracted the girls from taking care of their egg children. They were all too soon forgotten. A few weeks went by and Amie started smelling something very stinky in her room. It got worse and worse. She looked and looked to see what was causing all the stink. She found and uncovered the egg she once called her child. It was rotten! It was stinky! 

If you keep an egg after Easter.. it can have a rotten, stinky end! 

Another story. The grandkids came up one day and we colored Easter eggs. I put them in a bowl and placed them on the counter to be eaten. All got eaten, except one. We couldn't find it for the life of us. Buster was distraught over losing his blue egg. When he left, I promised him I would keep a look out for his egg. Several days went by and I decided it was time to clean up Easter. I started to take out the grass in the bowl and lo and behold, the case of missing blue egg was solved. It had been hiding in the grass all along.

If you want all your eggs to be eaten, don't put a colored egg in the same color grass!

Writing prompt #3: Write a blog post inspired by the word: Easter.

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Bean

... a small black chicken

Every year at Easter time, when my children were young, we got some fertilized eggs from a farmer friend to incubate. One year we got some Banty eggs. Banty's are very small chickens and their eggs are smaller than usual. We had great success in hatching the eggs. On day 21, they began to hatch. One by one, the little black chicks pecked their way out of their shells. It was always an amazing sight to see the miracle of birth. Something you never tire of.

After the chicks hatched, we put them in a big box in the kitchen with a heat lamp overhead. Newspaper and sawdust were placed on the bottom to keep the chicks as dry as possible. We heard non-stop peeping from the chicks. They ran around the box chasing each other, peeping excitedly. After some chicken scratch and a little drink, they gathered in a corner of the box in a big huddle. Feather to feather, on top of each other with no space to spare. The peeping would settle down and they would doze off for a bit.

When the weather was warm enough for the chicks to be outdoors, we put them in a large wired cage to slowly get used to the cooler temperatures. The heat lamp continued to be a comfort to the growing chicks. It wasn't long before the chicks grew enough to venture out in the yard. We noticed one of the chicks growing a comb on its head. We had a rooster! We named him BEAN.

Bean had a personality all his own. He pranced around the yard like he owned the place. He had beautiful black feathers with green, red and gold colored feathers intertwined. His red comb complimented his look. He was handsome all right. He knew it, and the hens knew it! We did not have a chicken house. The chickens roamed the back yard and pretty much stayed there. Bean had a favorite place to perch and rest... on the kitchen window sill that overlooked the front porch. He was a funny thing to watch. He would fly up to the window sill, stretch his neck as far as he could, cock his head from side to side, and crow his little heart out. It started out as a half-cockeyed sound of a crow, but he practiced his crowing skills until he got it right. So now Bean had all the rights of waking, not only the hens up, but the neighborhood up as well. I wonder what our neighbors thought... we were in city limits after all!

One day, we woke up to... no cock-a-doodle-do sound from Bean. Where was Bean? We couldn't find him anywhere in the yard. We were so sad. We missed him. 

A day went by, a few days, a week, two weeks. No sign of Bean. It was getting to be late summer; close to county Fair days. One particular day, the kids went to Willow Park to see the animals, play in the water, and on the playground. The park was located across main street, about five blocks west of our house. The fair grounds were just to the north, adjacent Willow Park. As the kids made their way back home after their day of play, they walked past some outbuildings on the fair grounds. The last building was a wood barn, painted green. Low and behold, there in the corner of the barn, happily pecking the ground for seed, was Bean. BEAN! How could that be? He had wandered away from home and even crossed busy main street. He had been gone two weeks, and we had worried about him this whole time. But Bean had no worries. He had found a chicken's paradise... the Fair grounds! What better place to be with all the abundant shade, buildings, trees, grass, endless water and food. Bean had made his way to the Fair! 

Of course, the kids were more than delighted to scoop Bean up in their arms and carry him back home... 

Home to sit in the window sill, practice his crowing skills, and watch over his brood of hens! Bean never ventured from home after that.

writing prompt: An Easter Memory