I am not a major Easter celebrator, at least not in a religious way. We’ve always gotten together as a family, did the whole Easter egg hunt thing and had a big meal together, but we are not really church-goers. My mom belongs to a couple of churches and we would occasionally attend with her, but this was always with a more spiritual rather than religious attitude. However, I have never had a super special connection to Easter: I didn’t even celebrate it with family last year – I was in Scotland!

This year, I feel really grateful to be with family. If you’ve followed for a while, you’ll know I got out of the city before the “pause” and got to my sister’s house upstate where I have been for twenty-six days now, and we are all well. I know a lot of people are unable to spend time with their families right now, and I’m lucky to have that!

The day started off bright and early with my niece waking me up so that we could all check out the Easter baskets on the table. After the kids enjoyed their jellybeans and other small treats, we had a quiet breakfast before hiding Easter eggs.

I had the task of hiding the Easter eggs in the garden. I hid a total of eighteen eggs… one of which got immediately pecked at by one of my sister’s chickens!

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The kids had a lot of fun running through the garden looking for the eggs. In the end, they unearthed sixteen of them… and not even the adults could find that seventeenth egg. As I hadn’t hidden them in particularly difficult places, we can only assume that a second egg had been stolen by one of the chickens. How they accomplished this, I don’t know, but there’s no other explanation for where this egg disappeared to (unless I miscounted to begin with, which is also a possibility).

The day was otherwise quiet. I read a book, the kids played, dinner was made. We had a huge turkey for dinner, along with stuffing and potatoes.

For dessert we had an awesome chocolate cake, which the kids and I had decorated with sprinkles earlier in the day. It wasn’t my usual Easter cake, but we weren’t about to go store hopping looking for the Cadbury mini-eggs needed to make that cake it’s very best self, so we went with a straight chocolate cake – and it was totally worth it! This is going to be my go to cake recipe from now on I think.

Dinner was on the early side so we spent the rest of the evening before the kids’ bedtime just hanging in the living room. There was dancing (sugar high had clearly kicked in) and singing and general merriment. All in all, a good holiday!