Family Traditions

Just like any holiday, there are tons of family traditions that are associated with Easter. Many families gather together to dye easter eggs, some make food to leave for the Easter bunny, and others might attend the neighborhood Easter egg hunt. In our family, we do a few of these, but we put our own little spin on things, as usual. My Easter tradition starts on Ash Wednesday. Many people, including my family, begin lent on this day. This year, like the past few years, I gave up soda. I should have just given up Dr. Pepper because that is usually the only type of soda that I ever drink. However, I will have to admit, I messed up! I drank soda 2 times during lent. :( I indulged in a cherry limeade one day, on accident. I didn't realize that they had sprite in them. OOPPPS!! The next time, we are not going to mention but I drank a Coke. Once again, OOPPPS! I think I will be forgiven on theses two times. Lent is about bettering yourself as a person and as long as I realized my mistake, I think God will forgive me. The best part of our family's Easter traditions is on Easter itself! Our plans are never the same due to schedule conflicts with both sides of the family, but we always manage to see each other! Church is a must on Easter Sunday, and let me say, Mom and Dad expect us dressed to a ten. After hours of prepping to fit their standards of attire on this blessed day, we all pack up, and in Mom's fashion, show up 1.5 min late to church to see all the amazing older people we have grown up in the church with. We always have "brunch" with my mom's side of family. I still to this day don't really understand the whole "brunch" thing. We never manage to eat it until at least noon so why not just say lunch? I think my Mimi likes the fancy sound of just saying brunch. Since my Mom's side of the family is quite small, we don't have many events with them. When we were little we always hunted Easter eggs in Ponder, but we don't really do that anymore.  However, any time with them is truly special. My Poppie never leaves us with a dull moment. After "brunch" with them and some good quality time visiting with my Mom's cousins on that side, we head back to Krum to hang out with the more wild side of my family, my Dad's side. This is where our family traditions get a little odd. Where most families just hide the eggs and let the kids go find them, this family likes to do things a little different. We never count the eggs before we put them out because that just makes things boring the rest of the year when you can't accidentally mow over last year's eggs. When this family hides eggs, they hide eggs. Last year it was my sister and I's year to hide the eggs. We spent about an hour hiding eggs, that should have just taken us 15 min. We climbed to the top of 20 ft. trees to hide one egg. We got out stools and hid the eggs in real bird's nests in the gutters. We even resorted to hiding eggs under the deck, in holes. While some might think this is a little cruel, and it kinda is, it makes for quite an interesting time when the whole family, including the hiders, are out looking for eggs for hours. Even after the hunt is over the wind will blow an egg out of the top of a tree and the race is on again. After all of the egg hunting, our family resorts to "riding the tractor" (according to Daniel) or, like in the past, crawdad fishing. Yep, that's right! In our Easter dresses, you can find us in the bottom of the creek crawdad fishing. Who does that? :) Another weird thing our family does is to buy multicolored chicks. Nothing is more exciting to our cousins, that live in the city, than a few chicks that are Easter colors. Not only that, we have new hens after they grow up! All of these traditions make Easter my favorite holiday. It is the one holiday where you are not stressed out about what gift you are going to give who, instead it is all about having a good time with the ones that you love and appreciating the real reason of Easter, the resurrection of Christ. The one thing that I miss about Easter as a child is my Gommie. Gommie is my great-grandmother that passed away when I was 12. Gommie spend hours slaving away in her kitchen, like many holidays, to make for sure that everyone in the town of Ponder would have Easter cookies in every shape. We would get bags of the best sugar cookies I have ever put in my mouth shaped like ducks, eggs, chickens, rabbits, and whatever other Easter shaped cookie cutter she could find that year. Come Easter weekend the people of Ponder would start stopping by Gommie's house to get their cookies and by Easter Sunday, once everyone else had gotten theirs, we would finally get our Easter cookies. This made my Easter! I looked forward to Gommie's cookies more than I looked forward to the Easter Bunny making his way to Krum! Every time Easter rolls around the memories of Gommie really start to surface, which makes me realize that everyday, especially Easter, Gommie is looking down on us to make for sure that our wonderful family traditions are carried out! 

I hope that tomorrow morning when you wake up for Easter, you celebrate the family traditions that hold your family together. Additionally, I hope that you remember the real reason of Easter while you celebrate with your family. Regardless, have fun with the ones that you love! Happy Easter!