Journal-About Easter

Belated Easter Greetings, World! I Love Easter!

April 12, 1980

Dear Journal,

I have been very, very busy, and I guess writing in you has become less important lately. Hopefully that doesn’t make me a selfish person. I have just been busy! However, I am still 12 and on August 3rd, I will be 12 and a half!

Today is my daddy’s birthday. He is so handsome. I love his black hair and blue eyes. He also has tan skin from always being outside. I love that he is a fast runner and that he wants me to keep running in track. My mom made him a carrot cake. Yuck! I hate carrot cake. Who ever thought it was a swell idea to make cake out of vegetables was lame. Any whoo my daddy is also pretty old. He turned 43 today. I made him a great card and drew him a picture of the canyon and his truck. We will make him crawl through the spanking machine tonight and that will be great! My mom won’t do it on her birthday, but my daddy is fun and silly that way. Luckily for me there will be vanilla ice-cream. Hooray!

Something exciting about my dad is that he is teaching me how to drive his truck! I love driving, but I go pretty slowly! We only go on dirt roads. Beth already has her Driver’s License so she never wants to drive any more in his truck. Lena drives slower than I do! She is supposed to get her Learner’s Permit this year. Maybe she will. But she needs a lot of practice. Sometimes I hit a bump hard and we all go flying around in the cab. It is the best fun!

I Love Easter

So back in time we go… (ha-ha, just a little bit of journal humor.) On the 6th it was Easter. I love Easter! I love that we talk about Jesus Christ and how he died for me and was resurrected after 3 days of being dead. Now we can rise again too, and He took everybody’s sins upon Him. That was the greatest miracle! He really loves me and everyone on the whole earth. Well, actually Jesus’s body was dead, but his spirit was busy doing other things. Being God’s son, he was always busy helping people. Dead or alive.

I love to color Easter eggs with my family. My mom boils a LOT of eggs and we get to color them. I like to draw hearts and rainbows on them with crayons before I put them in the dye bath. I tried to draw Hello Kitty, but Lena said, “Cute Bunny, Sis.” So I just said thank you. John just plops them in and gets dye all over. He is only 9, but seriously he should take more time. John did draw a really neat truck on one of them though. Joy is 3 and she got dye all over her hands and face. Mommy wasn’t happy about that. Joy puts them into one color and then picks them up with her fingers and drops them into another color. If Lena didn’t stop her all of the colors would look like Army green, and Army colors are no fun to decorate or find!

We found lots of eggs to put in our baskets on Sunday, and the Easter Bunny hides our baskets in crazy places. Beth’s was on top of the grape arbor! Mine was in the ivy by the baby pond, and John’s was in the BBQ! Beth did not dye eggs this year. She went to a Steak Dance.

Easter Candy & Chocolate

I hate chocolate, so I always give the chocolate foil eggs I find to Lena and Beth. I also hate those chalk eggs. They’re called malted milk eggs and they are disgusting. I only like jelly beans, except for the black ones. They are super gross and taste like black licorice. Gag! My daddy loves them, so if I find any I give them to him. Except I gave one to Joy and she ate it and then started crying. Her mouth was all black; even her teeth and her tongue, and it was really super funny! I had to run away though because Mom wouldn’t think it was a nice thing to do (Okay, it was a little bit meany) and I didn’t want her to yell at me or spank me. But it was super funny all right!

I also like it when I get a new dress for Easter. My mom made it and it is beautiful! My new dress is blue and the skirt is very full. I can twirl around in it, but I won’t do that around other people because it is not lady like. I am a young lady now, so I can only twirl in private, or with Joy because she doesn’t know any better.

Easter Dinner Traditions

I also love it that we have ham for dinner, and I love ham. It is so yummy. We had ham and mashed potatoes and gravy, and blown eggs turned to colorful Jell-O eggs. They are so pretty! We also had deviled eggs, (pretty looking but gross tasting) rolls and salad. Grandma Ella came with Grandpa Walt. Grandma Irene came by herself and Grandpa Brad came and the missionaries. They are all so wonderful. It was a really great day! (Except Beth acts totally crazy around the missionaries and that gets annoying and embarrassing! She even put on blue eye shadow, and it looked really strange. Plus Joy’s hands were all stained and still looking like a crazy rainbow hit them, but that’s my family!)

Okay, so this was super long and my hand hurts and I can’t even read my writing any more, but I am a little bit caught up now.

Love,

Cynthia

 

HINDSIGHT: Why I Love Easter

Easter is a Wonderful time to celebrate with family. I Love Easter!

My daddy is still handsome even though he is all gray and silver now. He is also still a big kid and a ton of fun to be around. All of the grandchildren love to hear his jokes. A grandparent can have such a strong impact on a child. I know that who I am as an adult reflects the relationships I had with my grandparents, especially my grandmothers. They taught me so many valuable life lessons. Their acceptance of me just the way I was became paramount to my sense of self worth. I do however, love carrot cake now, as well as zucchini cake, so I have changed my mind about vegetables being in cakes. I find deviled eggs to be delicious as well. It’s funny to me to see what I picky eater I was!

Then there is the whole chocolate thing. What can I say? My taste buds for chocolate didn’t come until I was 22 and expecting our first baby. My older sisters loved that fact and I traded all of my chocolate from the various holidays for caramels and fruity candies. Then I hoarded the score from one holiday until the next and hid it in my closet inside of my red rubber rain boots!

Speaking of older sisters: the night before Easter, Beth went to a youth dance at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saint’s Stake Center; Lena usually went as well. Until I reached the magical age of 14 when I too could attend, I thought they got to eat steak (an extremely rare treat) each month that they went! Beth being the tease that she was never corrected me.

Easter Today

I love Easter still, and all of the traditions that come with it. For my own children we make those Jell-O eggs too, only I bought molds for it years ago, and don’t have the hassle of blowing out fresh eggs. I feel that it is my favorite time of year when everything is so fresh and new outside. There is no smell quite like blooming spring flowers. A few times we have given the kids baby chicks for Easter. One of those years my son Sterling named his chick Dr. C.J. The good doctor lived to be ten years old! It’s really funny to think about now. We had no idea that chickens could have such a proliferate life span!

Easter Traditions

I feel that traditions are important to children and help them to feel a sense of belonging and pride for what their families do together. Traditions help to knit families together in love and faith. Traditions strengthen family relationships as well. I love Easter traditions. When our kids were younger we changed the day for the Easter Bunny to arrive so that we could just focus on the Savior on Sunday. That was the year when (Nichole) Nikkie was 9 and Sterling was 7. After that we decorated the eggs on Friday night and the Easter Bunny came on Saturday. We explained that we had left him a note to come on Saturdays because it was better for us and one less house for him on Sundays.

Adoption is beautiful

One year later we had added our three youngest adopted children. They have never known the Easter Bunny to come any day except for Saturdays. Seeing them celebrate for their first time was a mixed bag of pure joy and sadness. I told myself that if I was ever a foster parent I would not be too busy or overwhelmed to celebrate Easter or their birthdays! Yet I was filled with gratitude to have these three amazing little people enjoying themselves so much, even though Lane was just a baby and barely walking. Noelle and Nichelle (Ellie and Chellie) squealed with delight at every egg they found! Nikkie and Sterling had more fun watching them than gathering eggs for themselves. It was a very special Easter indeed.

Easter is a beautiful opportunity for us to focus on the Savior and teach of Him on Easter Sunday and not be distracted by all the other fuss. My two youngest children are on the Autism spectrum, and remembering things is very difficult. They both need severe repetition for learning. For instance, we thought they would never learn their alphabet. We worked on it every night for months, for several minutes. They remembered nothing. Then one night it was as if the alphabet slipped down into their long-term memory bank and they knew all of it! This was the same for learning about anything in their lives, including doctrine.

Adults make mistakes too

When Chellie was 6 her Sunday school teacher told her she was too old to believe in the Easter Bunny. That broke her little heart. She was only about 3 years old intellectually and developmentally. I understand that Sunday school is the proper place for all things religious, and maybe Chellie should have quelled her Easter Bunny enthusiasm when asked what Easter was for. Still it wasn’t right for that teacher to ruin it for her. She should have come to me.  I had a hard time forgiving the teacher, which sounds petty to say, but it really was devastating for poor Chellie. I don’t believe the teacher fully knew her limitations, and so that made it easier for me to forgive her and let it go.

It wasn’t that we didn’t focus on the Savior more than the Bunny, because we did, and we still do. But children will get excited about anything that includes candy or other sweets, not to mention the little toys that accompanied their baskets. When asked why we celebrate Easter, that was all the child could think of in that moment. Few people in the world understand Asperger’s Syndrome. There have been times when we have received well-intended notes of concern from their religious instructors lovingly informing us that our two youngest did not have a full, or even partial, grasp on this or that doctrine. We lovingly thanked them, and chose to not get annoyed or offended over it. What was the spirit in which it was sent? Love. So why be offended when no offense or harm was intended?

Easter Memories

 

So hold onto those traditions for your kids. They will remember them fondly. It truly is worth the effort, even when you may not hear the thanks you so deserve. At least not yet. However, children will feel a connection to you that will survive time, space and parental spats. I love Easter, I do. Celebrating Easter was a way of knowing my Savior Jesus Christ and perceiving that my parents loved me even though my mother did not say it to me often. She had to love me to make me a new dress or make Jell-O eggs or to hide all those eggs, and make up those cute baskets. She was able to show me she loved me in this way. My mother was not often a lovingly demonstrative person, physically or verbally. But by serving us, sharing her talents, and doing kind things for us, we knew she loved us.