Who got the White Chocolate Bunny?

Happy Easter, everyone! I hope it's been a great day for you, filled with family and fun. We had Mick's family over, as we do most holidays. We fixed a ham, mashed potatoes & gravy, Mick's now famous baked beans, green beans, my potato salad and deviled eggs. It would not be a holiday meal without deviled eggs and mine are the best! Well, at least I think so.Mary taught me how to make the potato salad and it's one of those things I make that I don't have a recipe for. I just know when it's right. I put some of my bread and butter pickles in it, along with some pickle juice. It helps that balance of sweet and tangy. I gave half of it to Mick's mom to take home because Mick won't eat it and I would eat it all if given half a chance. I always make myself a few extra deviled eggs and tuck them away in the fridge, kinda like it's my own Easter egg hunt! The dozen that went on the table were all gone, so I am glad I did.My earliest memories of Easter are dying eggs. Mom had a set of plastic coffee cups that we dipped the eggs in. She would put on a pot of eggs, the kettle, and got out the vinegar and food coloring. She also covered the kitchen table in paper or a plastic tablecloth 'cause the color was going to go everywhere. I always loved the smell of the vinegar and the hot water in the cups. When we were done, our fingers looked like tie-dye shirts. When she got tired of using the food coloring, she got us the egg dying kits that came with little coloring pills, a wire dipper and the box turned into an egg display. I think we only colored a dozen eggs, but it seemed to last for hours. We really did have a good time with it. We almost always did it the night before Easter.On Easter morning, we would get up and run to the kitchen to see what the Easter Bunny had left us. Our baskets were lined up on the big chest freezer we had. Mine was to the far left, and mine and Bobby's baskets were the same size. They had a wooden bottom, wooden handle and a plastic-like ribbon woven around the sides. Pat's was a little bigger, but Ricky's was the biggest. All our baskets were stored inside his. There were a couple of the eggs we colored the night before in each, jelly beans scattered around and we each got a chocolate bunny. One of us though got the white chocolate bunny. Each year it would be someone different so I couldn't wait to see if it was me! We also got little chocolate eggs wrapped in colored foil. We couldn't eat our chocolate bunny right away, but we could sneak a chocolate egg or two before we had to get dressed to go to Sunrise Service.After returning from church, we went to Grandmaw Barton's. The whole family would be there over the course of a couple of hours. All the kids would end up outside to play, but we had to be careful to stay out of the flowerbeds, which was almost impossible. She had flowerbeds everywhere. She also had concrete statues of animals in lots of the beds. My favorite was the donkey. I always wanted to ride him like a pony. I am sure we did, but Grandmaw would yell at us that we were gonna break his neck. A couple of years we had an Easter Egg hunt out in the front yard too. Try keeping a couple dozen kids out of the flowerbeds when they held the promise of a dirty hard boiled egg! Before it was all over, we would gather for a family picture in front of the house. There are so many pics like that. It's hard to tell sometimes which holiday was which from our pictures.

This is the next generation. I don't even know how many great-grandchildren or even great-great-grandchildren there were.

We also had an egg hunt before Easter on the playground of the elementary school we went to. Mom would take us and we would walk to the school with our neighbor. The playground was huge, so the hiding possibilities were endless. One year I got a nosebleed and had to stop hunting, pinch my nose and hold my head back. On the walk home, we stopped at a gas station across from Tom's Brook Elementary and got a Pepsi. Just one though, that we all shared. We would take a sip and pass it around. The school was only a mile from home, but we didn't have sidewalks past the couple of houses next to the school so we had to walk in the grass and up in neighbor's yards to stay out of traffic. When we returned to school from Spring break, we would look to see if we could still find and egg or two.When I started to work, I had to work on Easter. My brothers were going to car races and I think dad had to work too. I worked at The Virginian Truck Stop bussing tables. They had a special that day of stuffed pork chops, so I invited mom to have lunch with me. I think that was the first time I got to take her out to eat. She dressed up and had on a red polka-dotted blouse. I hated the idea of her being alone that day, so I was glad we could enjoy it. The Easter dinners at Grandmaw Barton's just kind of ended or we just didn't go.We also stopped having Easter baskets. They were stored in the attic, with the grass still in them. When we pulled them out, I think for my niece, the grass was all stuck together and there were a couple of dried up jelly beans in them. I don't know that I've eaten a jelly bean since. We would always get a couple of chocolate bunnies though. Happy Easter!