Families are like fudge - mostly sweet with a few nuts*

Even after I knew the Easter Bunny wasn't 'real' I still enjoyed a good Easter egg hunt.  The years my older brother was home to help hide the eggs were the best.  He'd find the most inconspicuous places and hideaways that oftentimes, a lone egg would be found months and months beyond it's "prime" time (I probably still ate them anyway, truth be told).  So yeah, even though my younger brother and I insisted that there still be an egg hunt long after it was socially acceptable, it meant that Easter was a whoollllle lot more fun than it would be after the hunts ceased.

2002 marked a sad, sad Easter season for the family - with Dad succumbing to the cancer just days after Easter Sunday.  The last Easter card I have purchased was one for him...where I had feebly signed it, "please get well", knowing it was a futile wish.  Since then, the coming of Easter has brought up sadness to me, to the point where I don't want to celebrate (admittedly, for selfish reasons; I've never been overly religious).  This year, Easter did fall a lot later than normal, and it was a few weeks after the anniversary, but, I still felt melancholy. 

My brother and sister-in-law had travelled to the Island to visit, and Easter Sunday fell in their vacation interval.  I spent the better part of the weekend at Mom's, surrounded by my craaazy family.  Easter Sunday we dined on leftover hamburger/macaroni goulash, not baked ham or turkey with all the trimmings.  If one was to spy on our living room through a looking glass you'd see a litany of crazy, spotted with a bit of lunacy, raunch, and silly thrown in for good measure. I'm sure we are the fixins of a real good sitcom :P.  Despite the silly, there's a whole lotta love...and I'm glad that I could spend a 'sad occasion' in the throes of craziness and family. 

I hope you all celebrated a good Easter weekend, and had your own mix of silly, fun, and the love of family, too.

*Author unknown - and the quote seemed to depict our crazy clan to a "T".