HAPPY EASTER!!!!!!!

This photo has nothing to do with Easter, the topic of my blog, but hey, blogs are more fun with photos right?
Easter Holidays begin tomorrow with Good Friday, but this Easter I will not be at mom's celebrating with an Easter Basket. (Yes, mom still lets the Easter Bunny visit her house and fill Easter Baskets for us.) Instead, this year, I will be celebrating in Kauai with Marty, Aim and Shane. It will be weird not to be home, in mom's living room sucking the center out of Easter Cream Eggs, but we'll all be together in spirit! Easter used to include blow up bunnies, chocolate egg hunts and sunrise church service. On Easter Eve, I guess that's what you'd call it, we'd get our blow up bunnies, our Easter baskets and our egg decorating kits out of the attick. Dad would blow up each bunny one at a time, only to have the first one deflate before the third one was filled with air. Every year, same problem, the bunnies had leaks and every year, dad would put them in the bathtub, squeeze them and attempt to find the leak, every year, he'd put some kind of patch on the leaks and pray the patch would hold until the next morning. The process was painful, why he didn't just get us new bunnies, I'll never know. For years, he'd blow up my purple 3 foot easter bunny three or four times before locating and patching the leaks. We'd stand our bunnies in the living room with the Easter baskets placed at their feet. Each basket was filled colorful Easter grass and a large carrot in anticipation of the Easter Bunny's arrival. The great chocolate egg hunt was the event that signified the beginning of each Easter morning as three happy, excited little girls jumped out of bed and trotted around the house in our feet pyjamas searching every inch of the place for chocolate eggs and jelly beans! The hunt was exciting and often we'd find very well hidden jelly beans months after Easter! After the Egg Hunt, we'd race to our Bunnies to check out our Easter Baskets. More often then not, the bunnies would be crumpled on the floor, completely deflated, but the baskets would be brimming with chocolate and other yummy Easter treats. Always the stub of a half eaten carrot could be found burried in the Easter grass, proof that the Easter Bunny had indeed enjoyed his healthy snack.
We got older, but no one, not us kids, not mom and Dad and not even the Easter Bunny could give up the thrill of a "treasure hunt." We stopped searching for chocolate and started following clues that led us to less digestable, but still desirable treasures. One year we all got bikes, another time lawn chairs and still to this day, there is always something left at mom's for us, by the Easter Bunny! Mom still goes to the Sunrise service in a field near the church on Easter morning. There was a time when all three of us girls would join her and the rest of the congregation as they sang and prayed every frosty early Easter morning. Though we are all rarely together Easter morning anymore, those are all happy, happy memories, but my all time favorite Easter tradition is one that started because two kids, who love to sing (by sing, I mean yell really loud, kind of in tune with the music that is playing) came home after one of those church services one Easter morning, feeling particularily inspired. They (me and Nic) came home, put Dolly Parton "He's Alive" on the stereo, blasted it as loud as it would go and sang at the top of our lungs with a passion matched only by Dolly herself, "...he's alive and he is risen, heaven's gates are open wide....he's alive, he's alive!!!!" Every Easter morning, since that one super inspired time, we have blasted that song and sang along. We never play it any other time of year, just Easter and I can no longer picture Easter without that loud, musical moment! So, Nic, this link has been attached especially for you, but I hope everyone will check it out and who knows, maybe you'll be compelled to sing a long too!!!!!! www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbRPWUHM80M -
(if you speed it up to 3:45 you will hear the part Nic and I sing....)