Let's Reminisce

Easter!

I really do think it's so, so grand. While I don't celebrate Easter in a traditional bonnet-and-church sort of fashion, I do really love the holiday in a huge way. A holiday devoted to cute animals and candy and art projects and springtime and deviled eggs? Yes!

It may be the Easters from my childhood -- which I may have told you about a few years ago -- with their foil-wrapped chocolate eggs and stuffed bunnies that we searched for around the house in an exhilarating hunt, the Cadbury eggs and Peeps, the gorilla-fist-size cream-filled egg with my name on it from my grandma, the jellybeans (my dad always ate the black ones for us), and did I mention the amazingly thoughtful scavenger hunt? Well done, mom and dad. I mean, Easter Bunny. Well done, Easter Bunny.

It could be the Easters during college, when we dyed eggs, my best friends and I, at the red table in the kitchen at 214 W. Vine Street. There were messages in plastic eggs, and then a hunt, of course, and outside antics, and good food, and cardigans and photographs and birds chirping. And croquet, perhaps? Was there actual croquet? Or perhaps just a lot of talk about it? Everyone should at least think about croquet on Easter.

And then there were Easters from my post-college years, with egg dyeing, of course, and all sorts of festivities. Last year, though, was really special. We spent it with Andy's family, and, a few weeks before we headed to Indiana, we made a date with Andy's grandma to dye eggs on the Saturday before Easter. It was pretty incredible, this date. We did everything according to Grandma's Egg-Dyeing Plan, which means very carefully crafted colors, using exactly the amount of drops from the food coloring box's color chart. We nestled the eggs in specific amounts of plastic grass, arranged in a very specific way. And you know -- you don't mess with grandma's plan.

The Friday before Easter, we went to the Knights of Columbus, which, if you're in the know, you call K of C. If you are Andy, then you miss the boat altogether and think that when you're told "we're going to K of C" you think you're being invited to KFC, which is, of course, a bit different from K of C. He was quite surprised when we got there, but not disappointed, since he doesn't like eating meat off of bones. We were both surprised when we saw how small-town awesome it all was. Lenten Fish Fry at 5:00 pm at K of C included many things, but words do it no justice. Please view the following and you will understand how completely amazing it all was.

 Giant vat of Eastertime pudding!

 Giant vats of tartar sauce. Again, very large bowls. So much tartar. So very room temperature.

 So much pudding. So little time.

 The only thing that was labeled. It was actually really good hot sauce.

My third pudding cup.

KFC's got nothin' on you, K of C!