Happy Easter!

Normally, I think of family, church and chocolate for Easter. This year was a little different. The emphasis was church, bells and butterflies.

We didn't have our usual family egg hunt. The family egg hunt has been carried on since the early 1920's. (Okay, I might possibly be exaggerating, but not by much.) It started when my grandmother was a little girl, and this is the first time in the history of the family egg hunt that the tradition has been broken. (Okay, I'm exaggerating again. I happen to know that my cousin held a family egg hunt up in New Jersey, so the tradition is still intact.) But this is the first year that I couldn't coordinate my children's work/school schedules.

Besides being disappointed that none of my kids had time to find plastic eggs with me, I was also upset that none of them went to church with me. Okay, I understand that getting up and leaving the house at 5 am in order to attend sunrise service is a hard sell. I honestly expected to go to that service alone. (I hadn't expected to find the church standing room only, though. This new church has a lot of really die-hard Episcopalians. I love it!) I did think that at least one of them (probably not the one living in NYC) would make it to the CCBR service with me. It was the last bell choir performance of the year, and I thought I dropped enough hints ("I really think you should come hear me play the bells, considering all the school/sport/band events I attended over the years to watch you"). All I can say is that they missed an amazing performance, the likes of which will never be matched. (At least, it won't be if we start practicing a little earlier in the season.) Since I was the only ringer (hey, it's not my fault that's what we're called) smiling, I managed to garner enough compliments to enable me to forget my children stood me up.

Although I didn't get to have the family egg hunt, I did get to participate in another wonderful Easter tradition. CCBR does a butterfly release every year. It was beautiful! And then I remembered to pull out my camera. Sigh. Luckily one of my favorite kids agreed to model for me. (Don't you love her nail polish?) 

I didn't get a picture of the butterfly actually flying away. We coaxed prodded, but the butterfly just sat in the envelope. I finally turned to see if anyone had any ideas on how to get it out of the envelope, and the darn thing took off as soon as my back was turned.

Despite the lack of pictures, chocolate, children and plastic eggs, it was still a pretty nice day. After all...

Alleluia, Christ is risen.He is risen indeed. Alleluia!