easter

easter sunday was great. we spent time the couple of weeks prior to easter talking about the reason we celebrate it, but of course it always comes down to the easter bunny and the egg hunt. unfortunately, this year we did not prepare an egg hunt for the kids with candy, which felt kind of strange, but, we did do one at grandma and grandpa cooper's which the kids loved (although, i must say that aimee does an activity with easter eggs and emblems of Christ’s resurrection which is a family favorite and very effective in teaching the kids about the true meaning). besides, the kids had participated in one the day before put on by our community at the park in which complete and utter chaos surely ensued as the masses of children and overzealous parents battled over the spoils of plastic eggs.

i say surely because because i wasn’t at the community easter egg hunt... i was working on our backyard (see relevant post). but i have been to enough community easter egg hunts to know that it rivals kids’ soccer games in terms of me wanting to punch some parents in the nose (that's the easter spirit). let me explain for the uninitiated: community easter egg hunts are events (and by events i mean battles) where it is required that you have five times more kids than you do eggs. and rather than turn away eager juveniles all hopped up on the easter spirit (no pun intended), a simple announcement is generally made, which applies to EVERYONE, that each child should only take a certain amount of eggs so that everyone can get some (i know, the math still doesn't work out).

so what happens? either kids don’t know how to count or parents don’t think that rules apply to them or their children... probably the latter (i would hate to see how one of these things goes over in summerlin… assuming community easter egg hunts are not too ghetto for “summalot”), because all of the rabid older kids tear out onto the field like a bunch of scots led by william wallace himself scooping up more than their fair share of eggs while the aforementioned overzealous and entitled parents hover over groups of eggs and box out the other rabid kids and overzealous parents so that their child can recover more than he/she should. it’s a lovely site. quite the testament of the civility and decency of an advanced society. if there ever was airtight proof of man’s link to a more primordial ancestry, this is surely it. all this ruckus over a plastic egg (some of which did not even have candy in them this year: what? stickers? are you kidding me?).

speaking of overzealous parents, aim, the boys and i enjoyed a very pleasant dinner with jeff and kenna on easter sunday. it had been a while since we had had a dinner with just the two of them and us, so it was very enjoyable. what was even more enjoyable (and arguably as pathetic) was the thorough shellacking administered by one jeremy cooper to his dear old mother on the tether ball court. she was a feisty senior, but in spite of her shoving her walker onto my side of the tire while throwing her dentures at me (she even strapped on her knee brace in hopes of garnering some pity), i prevailed. do I look like southwest to you? sorry k, there will be no pre-boarding for the old and decrepit on this flight. no handicapped parking here. let me know when you are ready for a rematch. maybe we should shift to something more your speed… like shuffleboard, bridge or naptime.

anyway, enjoy the pics of the family in our easter best. and i might ask: is it possible that there is a better looking trio of brothers in existence (excluding jeff, jeremy and kendall of course from your considerations due to the conflict of interest)? highly unlikely. who’s the overzealous parent now?