Eggcited

I'm not sure how its even possible that Easter is in two days. Didn't we just get back from Disneyland, like, yesterday?

Easter is kind of a neglected holiday around here. We celebrate it, but without a whole lot of enthusiasm. Although we did improve our traditions once we had kids. Then we started dying eggs, buying stuff for the Easter Bunny to bring and just putting some effort into the holiday.

Alana kick started our Easter traditions. She made the whole day so much different from the time she was born, so now I like it a little bit more. We bought her toys and books to fill her basket, since she was too little to eat candy. This year she's getting candy and toys, and Ava's getting just toys.

The past couple of years we have preferred to stay in Benson. We go to David's nana's house and then to my dad's. Ham and potato salad all around. Maybe even some deviled eggs. Strawberry shortcake.

Since the Sherman's go to Catalina, Alana has egg hunts by herself. Now we will have two kids at Easter, but Alana will still have a solo easter egg hunt. Ava can't roll around in the grass to pick up plastic eggs. She probably would, but she would stop at one and try to eat it, or whatever she found in the grass.

Melissa and I just pretty much throw the eggs out on the ground in the front yard. That's our tradition. "Hiding" eggs. Can't hide them too well when a two year old is looking for them. So we throw them on the grass and call it a day. Maybe this year we'll get more creative. She needs to have some kids so there's someone else there to look for eggs.

Tomorrow we are coloring eggs at our house. We let Alana pick the dye and she picked a Toy Story themed one. Just regular dye, but with Toy Story stickers. Good times.

Then I will set about cooking some delicious stuff for us to enjoy all day Sunday. Coconut cupcakes, watergate salad, shrimp cocktail, jello/pretzel cheesecake thing. Cooking for holidays makes me excited about that holiday. It puts me in the mood to celebrate.

Sometimes we slack off on Easter food, so this year I decided to make extra. Every other holiday we have so much food. Then on Easter we have ham, potato salad and deviled eggs. Then strawberry shortcake. I'm bored with strawberry shortcake. So we're having cheesecaked with strawberries. Way better. And shrimp cocktail spices up any holiday. Guaranteed.

Then tomorrow night I'll get out my many Target bags and fill up my ladies baskets with goodies. So when they wake up on Easter they will be waiting for them.

Is it horrible to say that was always my favorite part about Easter? Candy. Even though my basket always had too many jelly beans (the only good ones are red, orange and yellow) and I had to barter to get good flavors, and there were always Peeps. I hate Peeps. They are puffy sugar coated in crunchy sugar. I gave mine to Melissa. She thinks they're good.

And my cheapo parents would divide one half of the bag of candy between six of us, then keep the rest hidden in their room somewhere. Then we would find it a couple months later and there would only be like two left. I don't want to live in a house where I have to hide candy. Even as a teenager I still got a basket full of candy, so I can't complain too much.

But there is something about that plastic shiny Easter grass that makes me nostalgic for my childhood. Even though I ate most of my candy before noon, sucked at "hunting" eggs, and then sometimes snuck the rest of my candy in my pockets to take to church. Candy tastes better at church.