Hippity Hop

Hello friends!
Easter was fantastic at our house; I hope you had a lovely Easter too! (Or a lovely Passover or Ramadan).
We got incredibly lucky with the weather. It poured all day the day before, and it actually snowed and blew and rained and hailed, etc. etc., basically the entire week before. We got approximately two hours of clear skies on Friday to try to clean up the yard and we did our best.
But amazingly, it was beautiful and sunny on Easter! Cold, definitely large-jacket-weather, but so sunny and pretty. I got lots of family photos so hopefully with the lighting some of them turn out well.
We hid 350+ eggs and I am still convinced we haven’t found all of them. I think we got close though, the kids absolutely loved it. Each kiddo got a bucket and a little toy, either a stuffed bunny or a little set of pocket cars they could choose from (among the youngsters in my family stuffed animals and pocket cars are valuable riches, you see). After that it was off to the races.
This year there was enough youngsters that I had to send some grandparents and a grand uncle to the basement to supervise a Veggie Tales screening, because there’s too many bright sunny open windows upstairs to peek through, and the Easter Bunny is shy, you know.

(Most of my Easter pictures include family who would like their privacy respected so please enjoy these photos of some of the decor)

We had a lovely potluck dinner, I made ham and some chip dip, and lots of desserts. My extended family brought, in turn, turkey, some potato and pasta salads, some warm casseroles, and a couple more desserts. My mom tried her hand at deviled eggs and a little pasta salad kit, with supervision, and she did pretty well. A lot of the steps she remembers, it’s mostly just timing and remembering the safety rules, as well as reading the recipes. This is a huge improvement from even last year when she could hardly stand in the kitchen by herself without becoming overwhelmed. It’s easy to forget all the progress she’s made post strokes, and it served as a good Easter gift.
I also had set up an ice cream bar with lots of toppings, so the kiddos were very pleased. And very sugared up by the time they left. That’s my job as the fun cousin, although I think the parents were on similar sugar highs, we really did go dessert heavy this year. But we are a family of sweet tooths… sweet teeth?
Before we ate we had a nice reading of the bible story. This worked out well because, while I had made an Easter Bible Trivia set, everyone was so keen to be out in the sun we ended up forgetting about it entirely. I’m super glad we were able to get at least a little of the true reason for the holiday into our celebration. I think sometimes it’s really easy, I know I’m super guilty of this, to think about the Easter bunny for the kiddos and the food and the games and the yard and forgetting the whole Jesus thing. I’m guilty of that at Christmas too.
The kiddos also got to feed the horses some multicolored carrots, courtesy of our neighbors. The local research station rents land from my neighbors, and I’ve gotten to know some of the field workers. Since they are allowed to take home any harvests afterward (the research station is currently interested only in the seeds) I often get gifted some of the excess, this time, easily 15 pounds of various carrot varieties. I’m so grateful, not only that they think of me but also because its gorgeous, meticulously grown produce. I’ve been cooking with them lots, sharing with family, and feeding them to the girls, and even then, I don’t know if I will be able to use them all in time. Can you freeze carrots? Anyways….
The horses and kiddos had lots of fun, especially because purple carrots stain little fingers and horsey tongues, and little June was telling her little cousins about how she rides Ro and how “Manna” can give everyone lessons. I might be on the hook for a couple more tiny novice cowpokes this summer.
We got to try the new ladder golf setup, and everyone really seemed to enjoy it. I was a little worried about the tethered balls flying with the little ones around but for the most part they are pretty good about staying out of the game zone. My family tends to get a little competitive so the wee ones have learned pretty quickly to not get involved unless they really want to play.
I also bought a game called Throw Throw Burrito, but with the wind a little blowier than usual we didn’t think an outdoor card game would work exceedingly well. No worries, next get together we will throw three-foot inflatable burritos at each other, we have the whole summer after all.

I hope you guys had as magical a weekend as we had. I need to spend today cleaning up, my house looks like an Easter bunny exploded, so I’ll leave this here.
Until we chat again my friends!