This Easter, I vowed to keep the candy out of the baskets for Will and my stepson. I succeeded, except for the two Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and a Snickers that my husband slipped into the stepsons.

However, that is not to say that it’s a candy free Easter. As luck would have it, I was in Walgreens one morning this week and was seduced by the candy. It lured me in with its sweet promises of smooth delight. So I bought some. Okay more than some. I bought a lot.

Instead of candy filled baskets, the boys got other stuff in the baskets. For instance, Will’s basket has a pair of rain boots for the yard, gardening gloves (to help Mommy in the garden), and other fun stuff. The candy is hidden away in plastic eggs, which they will have to locate this afternoon in a mini egg hunt . . .

Let’s just hope that Will doesn’t eat all the candy before I can stop him.

Easter was a blast growing up. I would awake to an overflowing basket of candy covered in bright cello wrap. I would examine every chocolate and candy before slowly digging in. I liked to save some of the treats for later, though I am pretty sure my mother would pilfer from one ones I didn’t eat right away.

But perhaps the best experience of my yearly Easter celebration was crashing my neighbor’s celebration. See, we’d eat Easter dinner as a family pretty early. And oft times I would have skipped at least one meal, replacing it instead with candy. So by the evening I was hungry.
And that’s when a friend would appear next door at her family’s home for their buffet style Easter.

I would never go with the intention of eating, but once there it was hard to resist the succulent ham and the moist rolls and the steaming veggies . . . oh yes, I would eat a second Easter dinner at a party I crashed. (This was but one of many holidays I crashed at these neighbor’s house . . . It was a bit of a tradition that continued well into my teen years.) Eventually, the Mr. Hebert passed away and Mrs. Hebert moved to a smaller home. That was the last I saw of the family.

Memories are good.