Holidays with my family are

sometimes unusual, sometimes exceptional, but never ordinary. Easter 2008 had no cause to any different.

The day began with the typical drive. We’re on our way, we’re on our way, on our way to Grandma’s house. We’re on our way, we’re on our way, on our way through an icy tunnel of 27 foot high snow banks and windy, white-out road conditions.

Instead of noshing on the customary ham and sweet potatoes, we ate a giant cheese ball so delicious that I could have smeared it on my bare chest and died happily smelling of old cheese and chives, beef stew (although I’m not sure it wasn’t muskrat stew because my step-dad had that “I just killed something” look on his face), green salad and sinfully cream cheesy carrot cake (I swear my little sister makes such wicked desserts so she can forever keep me in her fat pants).

Plus nobody was drunk this year. So there was that.

And instead of a rousing hunt for cheap baskets ladled with high fructose corn syrup candy and more plastic crap trinkets we’ll never use, there was an icicle light saber sword battle (straight outta Star Wars I tell you) and a free-for-all snowball fight – whose casualties included a stinging wrist (Grampy’s fastball), a broken pair of sunglasses and four pair of little-kid jeans in the dryer.

I never realized how truly cutthroat my family is when it comes to hitting my butt the target with a snowball. One moment my Husband’s on my side and the next he’s conspiring with my mother to take me out in a furious pelting of white. Good thing my mother throws like a girl and my Husband knew who’d be going to bed with him tonight and took it easy.

Our truck made for great protection from the onslaught and a lucky place to strategize on how best to make your mother run crying into the house.

Eggs. There were eggs. Pretty, multicolored eggs that made my Toddler’s knees shake with anticipation. Touch! Grab! Drop! Squish! All proper techniques for the flawlessly dyed egg of course. The ever-more patient Other Parent was left with Toddler duty for this one. I was seeing far too many flashes of white and lime green to focus on the experience instead of the mess.

I kept the camera pointed at my Biggies as they created, marveled and stayed little. Or at least not so big.