Easter

Easter is a lot of things but to me it was another reminder that my boys are all grown up. I remember like it was yesterday holding Jaron's hand at my parents in American Fork while he was two years old and trying to find the eggs. With his long Dutch boy haircut, and pudgy quick walk. He was more interested in opening up the eggs he had than looking for the next one. And then Jace at 4 or 5 helping everyone else find something, especially those younger than he is. He never seemed to notice if he had something in his own basket, just that the younger kids did, especially his little brother. That is just who they always have been. When the boys were little we made a decision that candy wasn't what we wanted the boys to have for the holiday. We would buy them a little gift for their basket instead. We would always go to Grandpa's easter egg hunt and the boys would still end up with candy all the same. But I remember giving them a beach themed baskets, Disney video themed baskets, and then as they got older, video game baskets. When we got the basement finished in our house in Utah we started having our own little easter egg hunts in the basement. They always went well until we started finding an egg or too in July because we had missed one. We never seemed to count them first and we always missed a few.

This year we were so busy trying to get the yard and deck put back together after all the remodeling we didn't really do much holiday stuff. But Jay and I did buy the boys some chocolate and put together a basket for each. Jay and I had planned on doing an easter egg hunt. I was already a little homesick because my family was all having a hunt on Saturday in Utah, but we didn't live there anymore. By Saturday night we just thought of chocolate all over the house and didn't want to do a hunt after all. Jay bought all the stuff to do colored eggs. Of course, we never got to the colored eggs, the stuff is still in the cupboard waiting (we are determined to do it sometime this week just for the fun of it.) We didn't have themed baskets for the boys, for the first time it was actually just chocolate. Oh, and a little money to spend on whatever they wanted. Can you tell mom was a little lazy this year?

But one thing never changes.... Jaron's candy was gone by Monday night, Jace still has candy in his room, it will be hanging around until Halloween when we finally make him throw it out. See, the kids grow up but they stay the same.

One good thing about having teenagers at Easter. They may have forgotten the Easter Bunny but they understand the true celebration of Easter. They understand the importance of religion, the impact it has on a person, and the benefit it is to them to have a belief system. So, teenagers do get something out of Easter, just something different than what they did when they were young.