Easter As A Child

I don't have the best memory, but there is one snip-it of Easter that I remember from growing up. It must've been when I was quite young, because my older brother (4-years older) was still participating in the events with my younger sister and I. My Little is 2-years younger than I am.

My mom, ahem, I mean the Easter Bunny, used to put jelly beans and candy ALL over the house for us to find in the morning when we woke up. She went all out. We'd still be finding jelly beans in hiding places a month later that we missed. It was so fun. This really dates me, but this was back in the era of glass half liter pop bottles. The Easter Bunny would even set a jelly bean on the tops of empty pop (I'm from the mid-west, this word is acceptable) bottles. That Easter Bunny sure got creative.

So anyway, we'd arise from bed really early on Sunday morning to find our house all full of candy. We'd each have individual baskets with some candy and trinkets as well. So as tradition goes, all three of us would get our plastic cereal bowls out, we each had our own color, and start going around the house looking for and picking up the candy. Being that my brother was so much older than Little and I; he was better at it. And faster. So we'd essentially follow him around the house, trying to pick up on his leads, and beat him to the punch. He always got so much more candy than we did. But that's just how it always went. He kicked our butt at everything.

We're all in the living room, and the room has been pretty much wiped clean of candy, and we're all spread out looking for anything that might be remaining, when all of a sudden, our older brother trips and loses three-fourths of his candy all over the floor! Little and I haul ass over to the spill and start filling our bowls with all of the candy on the floor. It's like a pinata just exploded, and we're going to town. Of course, our brother is down there with us, trying to get all of his candy back. Little even started taking candy out of his bowl as he was refilling it, because he set it on the floor so he could use two hands to pick candy up! The candy got divided up pretty evenly after that. After all the candy was picked up, we all went on our way looking for more, almost like it didn't happen. It's funny, especially the part about taking candy right out of his bowl as he was refilling it, but I always had this hint of guilt about stealing all his candy. Even now I kind of feel bad. That may have been the last year he participated, I can't remember. It was always kind of a competition to see who could get the most candy, even though we all shared it after, and it really evened out the playing field with that trip happening. I'm cracking myself up thinking about what scavengers Little and I were to go running over there to grab all the candy we could.

I always wondered too, if my parents sat in bed listening to us rummaging through the house looking for candy, snickering to themselves about the awesome job they did putting candy out for a little while before getting up?

I also remember one year my cousin (I'll leave his name out to protect the innocent) telling us that he saw the Easter Bunny in their house on Easter morning. Little and I were soooo jealous. A few years later we figured out he was just a liar.

Ahh, good times.