Easter fun and a bit of Tomfoolery

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We made these little peepers last year to go with our Easter dinner.  photo credit to: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mhuIaduG_

Easter Sunday is a big deal around here.  We enjoy a joyous worship time with our church family, and then we invite our extended family and some friends to our house for dinner each year.  Before this time, we pray for grand weather:  73 degrees please, God, and no rain on this day, please. . . and no gale-force winds like last year . . . and please no snow, just for this day.  Easter is unusually early this year, situated as it is on the tails of a cold and snowy March, so anything could happen.  But I’m still praying for sun and the gentlest of breezes, so we can be outside in the natural splendour, rather than inside my never-clean-enough house.

Last year’s Easter was warm and sunny, and a bit windy, from what I remember.  Our baby sister Mollie and her family weren’t able to come for the day, and we missed them.  We are a clannish group, and when one person is missing, it always leaves a noticeable hole.  So we decided to include a facsimile of Mollie (made with a large photo of her face, and the bones of an old scarecrow) in all our doings.

Here she is, clearly not as attractive as the real thing.  Little Mack wasn’t fond of the Aunt Mollie facsimile. It is true that she’s friendlier in person.

Food and drink is a pretty big deal any time the Youngs get together.  For parties and celebrations of course, the menu is carefully planned and designed for maximum enjoyment.  I’m in charge of the Easter dinner potluck and I’ve thought it through carefully this year, remembering the infamous Easter dinner when nearly every dish was a shade of white (cloud rolls–fisheye salad–mashed potatoes–turkey breast–you get the picture).  Oh, the horrors of that realization, to me, that I had planned so poorly!

You’ve heard the old story, I’m sure . . . about how to get ride of unwanted company?  I’ve heard it many times:  you feed them an all-white meal.  Obviously that was not my intent on that Easter day several years ago–really!  it wasn’t!–I was just careless in my planning.  But I’m more thoughtful about it now.  This Easter Sunday dinner will include ham and scalloped potatoes, two green salads, cute little stuffed egg chicks, frozen fruit salad, fisheye salad, several (colorful!) desserts, among other brightly-colored foods.  No all-white dinner this year, thank goodness!

We took our Mollie boating on our little pond.

Because we had such an excellent motivation to take photos, we took lots of them and we stayed quite active all afternoon, busily posing our Mollie in as many places and positions as we could think of.  I think she had a good time, and we certainly did.

Here we take a group picture with our Mollie.

Besides eating pretty much constantly throughout the day, we also spent quite a lot of time hunting for cleverly-hidden Easter basket-cups full of candy, and then the rest of the time eating the chocolate eggs and marshmallow peeps tucked inside them.  One year we flew kites, but it was too windy last year to enjoy that diversion!

I took our Mollie up into Amalia’s new treehouse.  

I look at all the greenery in these photos with awe, since this Easter is going to be as cool and brown as last year’s was warm and green.  What a difference a couple of weeks can make in the early spring!

Here big brother Mark gives li’l sis Mollie a piggy-back ride, while Mary and Amalia search for their baskets.

This year, I believe that our big brother Mark will miss Easter at our house.  I have a feeling that we could make sure that that doesn’t happen . . . hehe . . .

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