HAPPY EASTER!!!

OK...you have to admit I have been very good in my restraint in publishing pictures of my darling grandsons. But Jen just posted this on her blog and I just couldn't resist passing it along. My little Danny Boy is doing well...still tiny but now up to 13 pounds at 4 months. Appears he has luckily passed on the Manthei chubby gene and chosen his fathers ectomorphic metabolism.

As another holiday approaches, I again feel sad in missing spending it with my grandsons. I love living in the warm, sunny Southwest, but it is just too far from the family in the Midwest for frequent visits (my son and daughter in laws must be relieved!!!). Again this year I won't be able to help dye eggs, watch their glee in finding their Easter baskets and stuffing their faces with found jelly beans. Probably the boys are starting new Easter traditions passed down from the other side of their families.

I think back to my early Easters. We usually got up early every morning during lent and attended Mass before school (often with a trench coat over our jammies and a scarf covering the rollers in our hair!). We walked the 4 blocks on the crunchy ground as the thawed yards of the day before had frozen again at night. Then Holy Week were days of fast and abstinence, Stations of the Cross, Washing of the Feet, and then finally Easter Sunday! We wore our new Easter dresses, patent leather shoes (unless there was yet another blizzard and we had to wear our boots one more time!), white gloves and a new hat with bright, artificial flowers. But first, we woke early to search the house for the hidden baskets of candy that the Easter Bunny had hidden, and to see who could find the most hidden jelly beans that might be on window sills, in a shoe, on the bookcase or on the picture frames. After Mass (and family pictures), we would come home for hard boiled eggs for breakfast made from our colored eggs (and were often the color of the shell inside, too), then later had a big ham dinner in the dining room, complete with Mom's best china, silver and goblets. Then it was over....the morning treks to Mass, spring vacation (which was called "Mud Vacation" if the thaw made the dirt rural roads impassable for the school buses to travel....my city cousins were amazed that we were released from school for a week for something called "MUD VACATION"! The jelly beans lasted a little longer, but not too much. Weeks later a jelly bean or two was usually found in a well-hidden spot and devoured.

I still love jelly beans (especially the cinnamon ones that Brach's makes) and malted speckled eggs. And I still get a bite of a chocolate bunny as I nibble the ears off the ones I send my daughter...TRADITION! And now another generation is ready to celebrate Easter. I'm sure they will continue some, change some, and forget some. There are new traditions and memories to be made. HAPPY EASTER!