Growing up, every Easter was the same…there would be Easter decorations set out. Even an Easter tree made with blooming branches of the dogwood tree from our backyard. We dyed eggs a couple days before. My mom made us Easter dresses. My dad bought us all corsages to wear. Easter morning baskets were hid and my dad sent us on a scavenger hunt, complete with rhyming clues to find our goodies. There’d be our dyed eggs, some candy and one or two other age appropriate things. We’d all pile in our car and head to church. After church there would always be a big family dinner.
As long as my childhood memory goes back, that was our Easter. And looking back, I loved them. I loved our family traditions.
My mom had her ish together. Or at least in my eyes she did.
My dad rocked the rhyming clues. Even if he did reuse them every couple of years.
I feel like my Easter this year is still kind of…unfinished.
Even with the best of intentions, we never dyed eggs. And I’m not even kidding, I think this is the first year I’ve never dyed eggs…even through college we’d dye eggs because my brother is 10 years younger than me. Don’t get me wrong, I had every intention of dying eggs with Rylee. I boiled our eggs up on Thursday night with plans for dying on Friday. Then Friday came and Rylee was misbehaving so we opted to dye them on Saturday between our Easter party and going to my uncle’s house for dinner. Then when I was cleaning up from the party I went to pull something out of the refrigerator and the entire bowl of boiled eggs fell and cracked. All 11 of them. In a rush I boiled a few more. But we never had time to dye them. So there we were, left with nearly 20 hard boiled eggs and not a single one of them were dyed for Easter.
I hardly even decorated for the holiday. Rylee set our her little Easter village that my mom gave her last year and other than that, this is was the extent of our decorating…
Easter morning came and the Easter bunny hide some stuffed eggs for Rylee to find and hid the girls’ baskets.
The only photo I managed to get of either of the girls was a blurry iphone pic of Reese.
I found myself getting annoyed that rylee was taking so long to hunt her eggs. Then it was a rush to get ready for church where I put Reese in one of Ry’s baby dresses and Rylee wore one of my favorite dresses of hers that my mom made…then paired it with a blue zip up hoodie and a St. Patrick’s day headband.
Dinner was really good, dessert was fantastic and we spent a ton of time playing outside. All in all it was a great day but we ended the day not even seeing some of our family. To me, that left it…kind of weird.
I want so badly to pass on the family traditions I loved so much as a kid that I hold so close to my heart as an adult.
And yes, I realize we threw an awesome Easter Egg Hunting Party with all of our friends that Rylee will likely remember for years to come. But I just can’t help but feel maybe in my “who cares, this is gonna have to be good enough” attitude, I failed my girls just a little bit.
Maybe I just need to realize that the traditions I loved so much growing up won’t be the same traditions we have for my family. Maybe it will get easier as they get older? As we settle in to our own Easter traditions?
One thing is for sure, no matter what the holiday, my girls will now they are loved and they are important, just like my parents did for me.
