I fondly remember a couple of Easter weekends spent at my grandparents home in Orem, UT as a young lad. Saturday was usually spent pruning the trees and sprucing up the yard. During the evening we all gathered around grandma's wooden table to color Easter eggs. I still recall the smell of vinegar and boiled eggs. Grandma would recount every year how Uncle Fred, with great patience unknown to most youngsters, would leave his egg in the dye longer than everyone else and he would produce the finest and thoroughest colored egg. We all tried and failed to measure up to Uncle Fred's amazing feats of egg coloring.
Some of the older cousins (there are about a hundred of us) would hide the eggs around the front and back yard. There where lots of bushes and farm remnants to hide them in. Even with a couple dozen cousins scouring the yard, there were always eggs that would be found over the next several months, and occasionally we'd find rotten eggs from the previous year.
Now that we are back in Idaho near both my parents and Jessica's, we had two Easter meals and egg hunts.
On Friday evening, my kids colored a couple dozen Easter Eggs with Grandma Wendy. Ah, the smell of vinegar and boiled eggs brought on the nostaglic ether. Several eggs hit the wood floor and were promptly shelled by Grandma eaten by Kyle my six year old who reveled in sprinkling them with salt and chomping into the pasty yoke. At one point Kyle spilled the green dye on to the floor and it splashed over a 12 foot radius. Thank goodness for stain-resistant carpet!
On Saturday Aunt Dessa hide the plastic prize-filled eggs at Grandma Cindy's. The four cousins old enough to participate thrilled in the search. The Easter meal included ham and potatos.
On Sunday afternoon we headed back to Grandma Wendy's for dinner and a second, more challening egg hunt. This Easter meal also included ham and the ever-popular Mormon tradition of "funeral potatos" or "Relief Society potatos". (They're dang good!) Aunt Kara had hidden the eggs in the back yard and her intent was to conceal every last egg in the most obscure of places from the prowling eyes of her young nieces and nephew. This egg hunt lasted quite awhile, yet with flushed faces Kyle and Anne didn't slow a bit and seemed to discover with a lot of helpful hints from the just as interested adults. Two more eggs were discovered by Kyle a couple of hours later when he decided he hadn't had enough thrill seeking. Who knows, there may still be a couple hidden eggs waiting to rot and be discovered next year!
This Easter was special for me in that my faith in Christ and his resurrection was renewed. Society seems to mock the Christian faith now more than ever and occassionaly the truth-seeking critic in me questions the evidence of things not seen, but which are true. Yet in these moments a light enters into my soul and the still small voices whispers to my heart and mind and I am a sure as I am alive that Jesus Christ knows me personally and lovingly. He lived. He died. He lived again. He will come again!
