We started out our family Easter weekend by attending the community Passover Seder at Norwich. It's funny how this tradition is often the most spiritual and contemplative of the events of my Easter week. It's not because it's relaxing -- this year, as usual, I helped a crew of volunteer students organize and host a Seder for 50 people. Maybe it's because of the rich symbolism of the Passover foods, and the fact that we actually sit and talk about what they mean?
 |
| 3-D Seder Plate |
 |
| These students were great to work with. |
 |
| Post-Passover frivolity. Gavin's sharp eyes found the afikomen again! |
On Saturday, we blew out some eggs, then colored them, then decorated them with feathers, googly eyes, and pipe cleaners. These kids get more creative every year. And Austin came up with an awesome bright red crab with pipe-cleaner legs. Next year, I think we should do our egg tree in advance, like the Christmas tree, so we can enjoy the decorations for the weeks leading up to the holiday.
Indy didn't seem much bothered by the bunny ears Lucy insisted she wear. She's becoming a pretty mellow dog. We let her take them off to snuggle on the couch with us while we ate Pillsbury bunny cookies and watched The Hunt for Red October. That's another family tradition, a bit hard to explain, mostly having to do with singing "bunny cookie" along with the heavy Russian background music. I think this is the first time the kids really understood the movie, so they were a bit worked up and it took a reading of The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes to settle them down to go to sleep.
Easter morning dawned to a few inches of fresh new snow, with more snowflakes drifting down. The kids were up at the crack of dawn to see what presents they got, and I got up with them to put the cinnamon monkey rolls in the oven. It felt like Christmas.
The bunny got creative this year, bringing baskets made of everyone's favorite candy boxes. The kids got some books and little Lego sets, so we spent some time building Legos this morning and watching the snow come down. I felt like I needed to keep checking the calendar to make sure it really wasn't late December.
Austin found the perfect gift in his Hot Tamale, SweetTart, and Sour Patch Easter basket. Yep, that's John Stockton and Karl Malone on the coolest pair of socks ever.
This Easter happens to be one of those years when General Conference falls on the same weekend as Easter, so we hosted the missionaries, some of the college students, and some local ward friends for brunch and then watched Conference. So Austin got to wear his new socks all day today. And we got to sit around in a sugar coma listening to wise words of church leaders. All around, a pretty great day.
