Easter Grass

Not so many years back, our "Easter Eve", if you will, was saturated in tradition. We dyed dozens of eggs, we decorated Easter baskets, we held fantastic Easter egg hunts complete with a gaggle of children scurrying through spring grass searching high and low for what seemed like hundreds of candy-filled eggs, plus the one prized Golden Egg. Finding it was momentous enough to want to add that to a future resume.
























But sigh.  Now all our kids are teenagers.  Teenagers are poopy when it comes to childhood traditions.

Does anyone want to dye eggs?   Nahhh....

Time to get your Easter baskets down from the attic. Is anyone going to decorate theirs? Nahhhh....

And I have to admit, their lackadaisical attitude is contagious.

Did I boil the eggs and set up the cups and Paas? Nahhhh....

Did I set all the basket trimmings and supplies out for them? Nahhh....

About the only thing I insisted on was that they put SOMEthing out on the table. If it wasn't their basket, so be it, but they had to put something out. A shoebox, anything. If they didn't, I threatened to just put a 5 pound bag of Domino's sugar on the table with 6 spoons and bypass the Easter candy altogether.

And some of them kind of met my challenge.  This year a plastic cake saver graces our table, as does a green storage bin from the pantry (I'm afraid to venture into the pantry for fear of finding a bin's worth of Ramen packs or popcorn bags dumped all over the shelf and/or floor).

No one put any Easter grass into their "baskets".  And truth be told I really didn't care.  I started pulling things out of the Walmart bags I had bought only just yesterday and dumping them unceremoniously into the baskets.

No!  I couldn't do it.  I stopped mid-Peter Rabbit on the 5th basket and took everything out.  I rooted through the Easter bin on the floor and found a large plastic bag filled with an assortment of grass from Easters past.  Green, blue, pink, yellow, sparkly, papery, plasticy, iridescent.  All tangled together in a flamboyant rat's nest.  I started tearing handfuls of the stuff and shoving it into the baskets, then giving it a little fluffing.  When I was done there were bits of grass everywhere, including in my hair and down my pajama shirt.

I stood back and surveyed my handiwork..
There now, I thought.  That looks like Easter.

And with a smile on my face I went back to work filling the baskets with chocolates and jelly beans, and all was right with my world.

Although it was made just a bit righter when I popped an M&M in my mouth.



Happy Easter, everyone!!!