A basket of goodies for the kids. Family dinner and remembering the reason for the holiday. The Easter Bunny is banned from our house. We have never taught the kids that there is an easter bunny.

When I was on my mission, there was a cult with which we were often confused, the "White Brotherhood". Their leader claimed that she was Christ, Joseph Smith, and all other previous religious leaders. I believe that she was planning to crucify herself, but I'm not sure what came of it.

Foodwise, Easter is ham and funeral potatoes, and lots of other yummy fixings. I do my special OJ-mixed-with-grapefruit-pop, and we have dessert. (My poor deprived family. It's a big deal that they get juice n' pop, and dessert.) And it's on my nice china, which strangely enough, is a big deal for the boys.

And I hide the Easter candy in the living room (there's always snow on the ground, so outside is not a real option). The kids get a list of what I've hidden for each of them, and then the older ones come in and help their little sister find her candy first, which is eminently spottable, and then the real hunt is on.

My oldest is now fourteen, and for the last two years, I've used some seriously devious spots to hide his stuff, and he'll spend hours looking. It's become a competition between the two of us, like two evil masterminds trying to outwit each other.

Mwuaaahaaahaahhahahaa!!

And some years we'll decorate eggs. But it's not a solid tradition, more of a "does mom have the energy to do this as well." So it's hit and miss.

-- Edited by dianoia at 14:46, 2008-03-18

Did you know this is the earliest Easter since 1918? Yep.

I found a thingey on the Internet about making pioneer eggs. You take a handful of yellow onion skins and put them in a pot of water to boil. Then you take parsley or carrot tops (greens) or celery greens or dandelion greens or whatever and wrap them around the eggs with a string so they're right against the shell as much as possible. Put them in to boil for 10-15 min. and take off the green stuff when you bring them out. Supposed to be cool... we'll see...

Otherwise I pretty much stick to the plastic eggs.

Gonna paint the baskets today...

Baskets, dyed eggs, and plastic egg hunt on Saturday. New clothes and family dinner for Sunday.

I went to get my supplies last night, and all the cheap-o baskets were gone, and I was starting to get pretty huffy about the prospect of getting ripped off for cutesy baskets. But then I found some buckets for $1 apiece. Yay!

I reuse our baskets.

When I was a child, we had a huge sand box in our back yard. We would get a new pail with a shovel filled with candy at Easter. I don't think it was every year, but we did get new outfits some years. One year, I had a long blue and white dress that went to about my ankles and my sister who was three years young in about kindergarten had one that was a lot alike but I think hers had a Holly Hobby doll on front. My mom got a matching suit for my older brother. And we have some family pictures.

We also did the egg coloring activity. That was fun. I don't think I lived eating the hard boiled eggs very well then.

I think that we went back to my grandparents sometimes at Easter too. They had a Catholic Church just a few blocks away so I think we may have went to Mass there. I know we went there at Christmas for midnight Mass. If we were home, I think we would go to our Catholic Church.

A couple of observations on Easter:

Rabbits and chickens abound and yet the traditional Easter food is ham.

Then, when you think about it, we are celebrating a Jew, with a ham!

I think it's cuz we're rebellious.

What really happened to the Easter Bunny:

Cocobeem wrote:

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What the freak, dude!

I ran over a rabbit once and it made this crying sound like a baby! It was really weird and it freaked me out for like months after that. I'm not kidding, it sounded just like a baby. I had to sic my dog on it to finish it off, the poor thing was just crying! It was like a rabbit sound... do rabbits even make sounds? Anyhow, that thing was crying, I kid you not.

You're SICK val! Totally SICK!

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We use the recorded sounds or simulated sounds of a dying rabbit to attract predators such as coyotes.  We can simulate the sounds using mouth calls similar to what duck hunters use.  I prefer the prerecorded ones though.  An injured rabbit will do a screaming cry that does sound somewhat like a baby.  Predators can hardly help themselves when they hear this sound and will often come barrelling in for a free meal.  Even hawks and eagles will come to the sound of an injurred rabbit.  All rabbits and hares will make this sound although they sound a little different from species to species.  On some it almost sounds like a whistling or squeeking noise.  Not all injured or dieing rabbits will make this noise but it happens often enough that predators know that the sound means dinner.  If you are interested in listening to some you can find them online at http://www.varmintal.com/coy5-20.htm .  You can even download them if you want to call in some predators.  The sounds are about midway down the page.