Whoa there...

It can't be Easter already. We just had St. Patrick's Day. Granted I don't do more for St. Paddy's Day than make sure I have green on somewhere so my kids don't pinch me (when you have kids in elementary school you gotta be sure to cover all the bases!), but Easter is a different matter. Easter is a Production. Easter normally means getting egg dye, four dozen small eggs (one dozen for each child) and figuring out a time to boil and then dye the eggs. Then there's arranging the egg hunt. I think doing it outdoors might be a possibility even though Easter is so early this year. In the past I've also tried to get new Sunday clothes for the kids because they've usually outgrown their old ones by this time. But this means sorting through the boys' tie box (I have three boys) and getting rid of ties they have demolished through fiddling and figuring out what sizes to get...not to mention the age-old dilemma: clip-on or traditional tie? My daughter needs a nice Sunday dress too, but finding one that is modest is hard, even for a seven-year-old. We don't do sleeveless dresses at our house, but try finding one at the store! Sewing one is definitely out at this point! With everything else going on in my life that's not even a pipe dream right now. And then we have Easter baskets to contemplate. I think I sent all of our old Easter baskets off to Deseret Industries (a local second-hand store) last year, so now I've got to figure out what to replace them with. I always question how much I really want to put into baskets anyway. And that begs the question, "What is Easter really about after all?" I think I'm going to follow my own advice and scale things back a bit. Most importantly I should make sure my children understand what we are really focusing on at Easter after all: the atonement of our Savior Jesus Christ. The trimmings are fun, but Easter is above everything a sacred occasion. So here's to simpler silly stuff.

And enough with the wide-ranging dates for Easter. What would be so bad about pinning it down to a particular Sunday in April anyway? After all, most of our other holidays were arbitrarily selected.