Let me confess right here, that the start of my little talks with you over
Easter weekend was a fluke, but also I think fortuitous. I love this time of
year, not so much for religious reasons, but for the official shaking off of
Houston's bi-polar wintry weather and the fact that it brings my family
together during this re-birth of all things green and flowery and, well...
fresh and beautiful.

And bluebonnets.  Nothing screams spring in Texas with more authority,
even if we do have cooler temps coaxing jackets out of our closets weeks
later. 
Bigger confession is the extent my family celebrates Easter, since you would
think I still have 4 toddlers roaming the house.  I don't.  Suffice it to say the
majority are complaining about college professors.  The youngest is still
poking us about wanting to get his OFFICIAL driver's license, rather than just
the permit currently residing in his wallet.  We have purposely let the request
fall on deaf ears, 'cause we are quite certain we will get a call from him after
a joyride to Florida.

Or worse, not get a call at all.


Anyhow, we still do Easter up big.  Dyeing eggs, PAINTING them, which is
my weakness, since I fervently labor to create marblelized masterpieces
with each one, hunched over in an artistic zone so focused, a tornado
could rip right through and I would still be sitting, brush in hand...painting
entirely unfazed.

I know now how DaVinci must have felt.  Ok, well, maybe not.

6 dozen eggs.  That's how many we boil, paint and scribble indecipherables
on with those tiny wax crayons just prior to dyeing.  As my kids have gotten
older, those wax crayon-inscribed eggs have gone from bearing their own
names, or maybe a barely recognizable bunny, to pictures of footballs and
basketballs, and having 'LeBron' written on them.  (Does he know kids in
Texas are making Easter eggs with his name on them?  I doubt it.)

At least we are being spared any members of the Kardashian clan appearing
on them.

Oh, and the Easter Egg hunt.  Yes, sorry to say we still do them.  Youngest,
driver's-permit-only child protests my announcements each March that the
hunt is being ceased.  His mantra is that his oldest sister kept getting to
participate in them at his age.  But this exponentially is the crux..she keeps
participating in them each year, so the hunt lives on in perpetuity.

I've given them all the fair warning, that the minute their own children
arrive on the scene at some unnamed future date (please be married,
though.  Parenting is hard enough on two people)...

...that the second they are knocking over their own offspring to get to the
eggs, they are done.

DONE.

A very Happy Easter to all.  Gotta go buy 4 chocolate bunnies and some
pastel Krabby Patties to fill their well-worn, much loved baskets.