Happy Easter!

We're not believers, but it's hard to escape Easter. More importantly, any holiday that heavily involves rabbits, ducks and chocolate is all right with me and mine. And once upon a time, I celebrated--as much as any child can celebrate a religious holiday largely taken over by commercial interests--Easter. I have fond memories of Easter baskets of Cadbury cream eggs, Reese's peanut butter eggs and these individually wrapped, wonderful coconut cream enrobed in pastel green-tinted white chocolate from Russell Stover (for a few years in my adulthood, you could still get them in a multipack of various chocolate eggs with different fillings, but now I have to suit myself with a dark chocolate-enrobed version that's just not as good). I have...memories of the various dresses Mum made to wear for the interminable Easter Mass. (How she ever had time to make three dresses practically every year for at least a decade is beyond me. I recall some of them being itchy.)

Here at Chez Boeckman-Walker, the boys dye some eggs and, weather and the boy's interest and mood permitting, hunt them. We have more than a few Cadbury cream eggs and Reese's peanut butter eggs and other sinful and often delicious candy. This year, I was this close to picking up a package of Hawaiian bread--the round loaf, not the dinner rolls--as I always associate it with Easter, but good grief is that stuff ever unhealthful!

Of course, come Easter Monday, we try to stock up on half-price candy at the local stores. Gotta love half-price candy!

To help you enjoy your Easter, Gentle Reader, I thought I'd share with you some of the boys' Easter art.

When the boy showed this one to me, he explained that the eggs were "coming out of" the momma duck and they were hatching. (Have I mentioned the boy's really keen on momma and baby animal, particularly on keeping them together? Sure, you could shrug off his fascination as some facet of his internalizing his adoption, but I've always noticed his interest grows following a stay at my parents' house, where he has my mother's undivided attention. Therefore, I chalk up his fascination with mother-and-child pairs as a statement that he find my own mothering skills to be sorely lacking, therefore he's going about fixing his lack of good maternal nurturing by pairing up his stuffed animals. Love that boy, yes I do.) I then explained to him that eggs don't hatch immediately after the mother duck produces them; she has to incubate them for a few weeks or so before they hatch. Notice, though, that the eggs in the picture look like they've hatched into poached eggs, not baby ducks.

I guess our conversation hit a nerve because the boy later produced this Easter image:

Yep, screw the whole incubation thing. Let's see some cute little duckies with that proud momma duck!

The boy didn't know how to draw bunnies, so the husband volunteered to teach him. He told me later that after he taught the boy to draw a bunny, the boy then taught Daddy how to draw a basket with a carrot in it. Can't let a bunny starve after all!

The boy helpfully labeled the picture as belong to him. Note the correct use of the apostrophe, Gentle Reader. I'm so proud!

Of course, he had to label his picture so you'd know it wasn't Daddy's picture:

Being the junior anal retentive that he is (much to my pride and dismay), the boy had to, of course, label his father's art as well.

Hope those pictures made your Easter all the more special! If not, go suck out the cream filling from a dozen or so Cadbury eggs. That will make your Easter very special.