No. 2 Son is too old this year for coloring Easter eggs. No. 1 Son became too old a couple of years ago. So it was up to Little Sister and myself to color the eggs. She did a great job. The 5/8 had bought some egg coloring kits which came with little foam stickers. So, naturally for a nine year old, the more foam stickers you can use, the better off the entire world is. Needless to say several of the eggs were so covered with foam stickers, they could have been dropped from the top of the house without even cracking the brittle shell.
On Good Friday, it has become somewhat of a tradition that we get Long John Silver's for lunch, eat it at Gage Park (which, BTW, got a lot of print in Stephen King's "Dark Tower: Wizards and Glass"), and tour the Zoo. Two years ago we went, it was dreadfully cold and windy. Last year we didn't go. The weather man promised rain in the afternoon, so we skipped the Gage Park/Zoo tour. But the day was mostly nice, not near as bad as it was the year before. Lesson learned I suppose. This year, despite the gloom predictions of weather, we made plans to go anyway.
Our plans were delayed by the need to meet the Lowe's delivery guy at the Ol' Man's apartment building. The Ol' Man owns an old, mostly run-down apartment building. It was built eons ago. Sometime in the early part of the 20th Century, the building belonged to the American War Dads fraternal organization. The building has a gigantic, beautifully decorated (at one time anyway) basement which was hand-dug by the AWD. I can't imagine digging that basement, with 10 foot ceilings, by hand. I certainly can't see anyone doing that kind of work in this day and age. Instead, they would simply tear down the building and build a new one with a basement built-in.
At any rate, the Lowe's delivery guy called me about noon, just as we were getting ready to head over to LJS to get our food. He was wondering if someone would be there to help him unload the tons of carpet, ceiling tiles and linoleum the Ol' Man was having delivered. The Ol' Man is in his 70s, and about 8/10 blind. He has trouble standing, let alone walking or actually carrying anything, so we took a detour to the building to help the Lowe's guy unload the items.
The zoo was nice. It wasn't too cold, but chilly nonetheless. I have discovered over the last couple of years, that the best time to see the zoo is when the temperature is somewhere between 50 and 65. In the cool temperatures, the animals seem to be out and about much more than in either the cold or the hot weather. The bears were out playing and wrestling with each other. The Orangutans were outside, climbing on the impressively complex looking equipment their environment contains. Even the female gorilla, which usually only has her foot or knee visible from her hiding spot, was able to be seen.
Easter was...well...Easter. We spent the holiday with the in-laws in Lawrence. Not my favorite place to be. The 5/8 family, especially her sisters, tend to treat her like a red-headed stepchild. Constantly putting her down and pointing out her faults, even ones that aren't there. It ticks me off, and the kids are aware of the tension all around which usually lasts for a day or two after any visit to Lawrence. But this time, this time they seemed much more cordial than they have in the past.
While Easter and Christmas are closely related, it is clear to all that Christmas is definitely the bigger holiday. My kids know the reasons we celebrate these times. If you ask them, they'll acknowledge that of the two, while Christmas is a bigger celebration, Easter is the more important of the two. I'm thankful, and proud they know the reasons, not only in a way that they can recite that Easter is the "day Jesus rose from the dead". But that I get the feeling they really, really know what it is about. We haven't kept them close-in and sheltered from other faiths and beliefs. They know that Buddha, and Mohamed and a host of other religious founders were all born a natural birth, like Jesus. But they also recognize that only one of them rose from the grave. No re-incarnated, but re-animated. He conquered death, and with that, waits to absolve us of all our sins and fallacies.
With that, I extend to everyone a (belated) Happy Easter day, and season.
