Traditions...

As I've mentioned before, I love Easter. It is my very favorite holiday. But this year, nobody in my neck of the woods seems to be in the mood to go all out for a celebration, including me. Our church is broadcasting a global general conference that we do twice/year. Normally, this conference doesn't hit on Easter weekend. The glorious thing about conference weekend is getting to stay home in your PJs with your family, veg out on the sofa together, tickle backs and have pillows and blankets. I always, ALWAYS make blueberry pancakes one morning and we enjoy a really mellow weekend. But with it falling on Easter, it just has me all confused and jumbled. Last Sunday, I had my family over for brunch and the menu was very Spring/Easter themed. We even did an Easter egg hunt for the girls. So now, this weekend, I feel sort of like I already did Easter. And given there aren't church services actually taking place, there's no place to showcase Easter dresses, bonnets and such. What to do? Add the colds and fevers we have all had and you can see why I am not downloading and testing new recipes for an Easter feast.

Here's what I think we'll do instead. Friday night, we'll do rotisserie chicken pita pockets for Passover. Ever since I taught New Testament for early morning seminary, I have always done something to mark Passover. Sometimes it's just reading about it, sometimes I've just thrown some pita and herb spread on the table to remind us it's Passover. I've always wanted to do the whole nine yards with the brisket and the kugel and the salt water and on and on. But I've never gotten up the motivation to really research how to hold a proper Seder and I wouldn't want to do anything to offend my Jewish friends so I've just sort of done my version of a Passover Shout Out and called it that. So rotisserie chicken, stuffed in a pita with an herb and mustard sauce and veggies ought to do the trick to give props to Passover for this year. I think the girls will like to hear the story because they are super into all of the stories and traditions this year.

Saturday, we'll just chillax around the TV, watching conference. I am baking some cupcakes for Grandma Meeker and for us. We'll eat leftovers for dinner of tonight's meal which was pork chops stuffed with apricots, celery, peas and cornbread stuffing. We will dye eggs on Saturday.

Sunday, I'll have Mike's parents over for brunch in between conference sessions. I'll just make a simple meal of heart shaped waffles with strawberries and cream, bacon, scrambled eggs and OJ. Then, they are leaving to go visit Grandma Meeker and I'll send the cupcakes and Easter card for her with them. I would plan on us going with them but we've been sick with this virus and Mike and Jessica are in the coming down with it stage and Grandma Meeker is 96 so taking a chance that she might get sick from us just isn't worth the risk. If we are all completely better, maybe we'll take the ride up anyway and join them for dessert. We'll play it by ear. If we don't go up, I'll take whoever is well enough over to the Meadows to pick up Grandma Bea after the last session of conference on Sunday. It ends at 3pm. So we'll get her and bring her back here maybe and have my Mom and Dad join us. I think I'll make salmon, roasted asparagus, rice and a green salad for dinner. That is a really easy meal that takes next to no work. I have the best sauce for salmon that is from my Grammie Bea that I'll make to go with the fish. It's butter, ketchup, dry mustard, soy sauce, sherry and garlic. It sounds like it would not be good but it is amazing. We'll have the cupcakes we baked on Saturday for dessert. At some point we'll hide eggs and let the girls go look for them and we'll do Easter baskets.

Whew...just typing all that made me tired. I am feeling quite a bit better than yesterday but still not at 100%. I'll need to be careful on Friday and Saturday not to over-do it so I can have plenty of energy on Sunday to make Easter at least somewhat memorable for the girls.

I love to hear about what other people are doing and their traditions. My SIL Amber's family has a big Easter egg hunt on Saturday where her Mom hides tons of eggs filled with money. I think one of the eggs is a golden egg and has like a fifty in it and the others go down from there. All the grown ups and kids hunt for the eggs together. Doesn't that sound fun? They have a big family so I think that would be a blast. I wish we had more family that lived close by so we could organize some gigantic, cool Easter egg hunt for all the kids. I guess it's no big deal. Growing up, I hunted eggs all by myself at my Oliver grandparents because I was the only grandchild and then just Bo and I hunted for eggs together at my Santos grandparents because everyone else lived far away. I never felt sad about it growing up so I guess my girls won't either. I think it's all about how excited the adults get and if we try to make it special for the kids, then they'll feel that it's a special day. If we just say "whatever...we aren't doing anything because it's just us" then the holiday won't be a special time for them either. Who knew this parenting thing came with all this responsibility? You have to keep them alive, get them shots, buy cute hair accessories AND give them warm and loving holiday memories to boot! It's a lot for a Mom to keep up with. But it's so worth it.

Today, my Dad called and asked for Jessica. He told her that there was this big red thing in the sky and she should go to the window and look. So she took the phone and ran to the window and looked and looked and then he announced "APRIL FOOLS"! She was so excited because then she got to be the one to go do the same trick to Katie. So we've been doing April Fools Day jokes all day. Katie called my Mom and said "Grammie, Oh NO! My mom and dad left and I'm all alone in my house." pause "April Fools!" And then they told their Dad they saw a zebra in the living room. But mostly, they would hide and as I walked by their hiding place they'd jump out and yell APRIL FOOLS as loudly as they could. I tried to explain that hiding wasn't really an April Fools joke but they didn't get it. Whenever I think about April Fools I always think about the time Marilyn told me that Grandma Huntsman played a trick on Grandpa Huntsman one year. She crumbled crackers (I think) into his shoes. If you knew Grandma and Grandpa, they were pretty by the book, no nonsense type of folks, even though they were amazingly loving and fun. She said as a kid they got so excited that their Mom played a joke on their Dad. It's funny the stuff we remember as a kid. I hope my kids remember all the little traditions we are trying to implement into our family history and memories. While I am thinking about it, I'm just going to list some of our traditions we've started so far so I can be sure never to forget them.

New Years: We play beauty parlor, we bang pots and pans, we toast with sparkling cider and drop balloons from the ceiling.

Valentines: We have something red for dinner and we hand make old fashioned Valentines for others with paper doilies, glitter, stickers and handwritten messages of love.

St. Patricks Day: Leprechauns invade our home! They turn our milk green and put gold dollar coins in our shoes. We have grasshopper pie for dessert.

Easter: We will always from now on do the resurrection eggs. We dye and hide regular eggs the day of Easter. We do Easter baskets but instead of candy it has a new outfit including shoes and a special Easter accessory like a hat or purse.

Birthday: We go for manicures and pedicures and the girls get to pick where we go out for dinner.

Mothers/Fathers Day: Girls make breakfast in bed for mom/dad and pick out or make cards and give presents that they pick out from Target.

4th of July: we don't really have traditions except for a BBQ and fireworks and we wear red,white and blue.

Halloween: We always go to a ward Halloween party, girls go trick or treating and they get to pick what they want to be.

Thanksgiving: we make dream catchers for everyone who will be at Thanksgiving dinner with us.

Tree trimming at Christmas: We set out cheese, meats, crackers, cheetos and sparkling cider. (we are very specific in our menu) The engraved silver bell is the first thing to be placed on the tree, even before the lights. We lift the girls up together to put the star on the top of the tree. That night, Santa leaves a snow globe and a letter for each girl on their pillow. They are able to communicate with the North Pole through their snow globes so they can let Santa know the "nice" things they do in the weeks leading up to Christmas.

Christmas Eve: we read the Christmas story out of the Bible and we put the pieces of the nativity in place as we read about them. We only eat appetizers for dinner but we have a huge variety of food that we spread out and snack on all night. We decorate graham cracker gingerbread houses and Christmas cookies. We leave cookies, milk, carrots, celery and apples for Santa and the reindeer. We open new pajamas and wear them to bed that night. The girls must be asleep by midnight in order for Santa to come. Mike always hears Santa's bells ringing at about 11:30 as a warning to get to bed.

Christmas Day: we do stockings first. We open presents and when we are 1/2 way done, we stop and make breakfast that always includes freshly baked croissants from Williams Sonoma. Then, after breakfast we finish opening presents. We try and go really slowly so we enjoy it and we open one gift at a time and everyone watches the person opening the gift.

Our non holiday traditions are "Nobody Cooks on Friday" is where we always, ALWAYS ALWAYS either go to a restaurant or get take out on Friday nights. It's the end of the week, we are all tired and nobody should ever have to cook on Friday. "Family Slumber Party and Movie Nights" is where once/month, we have a pizza party on our bed and we watch a movie in the dark like a movie theater but we are all four in our big bed together. We eat popcorn during the movie and when it's time to go to bed, the girls jump into their sleeping bags on our floor. Grandma Meeker's two handed wave. Mike's mom always comes out of her house when we are driving away and waves goodbye to the girls with two hands up and down like her mother used to. The girls wait for it and then wave wildly back at her with their two hands. Grammie's secret. My Mom always tells the girls she needs to tell them a secret. She whispers "I love you in their ear" and then they and Grammie scream "Ahhhhhhh!!!!" with delight. I have no idea how this one started. Also, when it's sleepover time at Grammie and Papa's the girls sleep with Grammie period. They will take naps with Papa but at night time they will announce "NO BOYS ALLOWED" and the three of them stay up very late telling stories and tickling backs and arms. And the last one is our cheer. Whenever we need the girls to focus in a busy place or whenever they get scared and need our attention, someone in the family will call for "MEEKER HANDS IN!" Then, you have to put your hands into the middle on top of each others and Mike will say "Meekers on 3. 1, 2 3" and then we all yell "GOOOOOOO MEEKERS!" It's so cheesy and dumb but if the girls aren't behaving in public or running around, we can do this cheer and before we say "break" and go our own ways we are able to have their full attention and remind them of the rules and behavior we expect. So we use it more to get their attention in a way they like.

I guess we are a really tradition filled group. And we are a lot more nerdy and cheesy than I realized. But I'm glad. Maybe the girls will pass some of these down to their kids. Some of them came from our growing up homes for sure. I never realized how many there were though. I guess I shouldn't worry so much about whether or not we are raising the girls to have traditions. I think we have it covered.

Seacrest Out. (oh, and we all four of us, always vote for American Idol and Dancing with the Stars)