The Day the Firemen Came for Easter

The day started out just like any other Easter morning. I drug myself out of bed bright and early to see what the Easter Bunny had brought me. I was "surprised" to find a grill in (well, technically beside) my Easter basket, complete with grilling utensils and a grill cover. I was pleased to see that the Easter Bunny remembered my favorite candy, cadbury eggs and chocolate covered marshmallow eggs. Yummmm!

After discovering that all of my laundry was still in the dryer, I threw on some dirty clothes and headed down to Gagoo's to help get ready for the day. I had already baked cupcakes decorated with bunnies, and a pretty cool watermelon fruit basket (that was a little lopsided). Once at Gagoo's, I made the dressing as usual, discussed whether the Davis's would be joining us (they had been sick), and buttered and sugared the rolls. As I was peeling a cucumber, I saw a flame suddenly shoot up in the oven. Gagoo noticed it at the same time. She pulled open the oven door and the flames shot up into the air, dangerously close to the cabinets. Gagoo bent down to blow on it, but I screamed at her not to, fearing that the gust of air would blow the flames higher. This was no small fire, folks. I frantically asked, "do you have a...a...a thing?" I couldn't find the words "fire extinguisher" in my head. Thankfully, Gagoo knew what I was talking about, but no, she didn't have one. "SALT! WE NEED SALT!" she yelled. Crap, the salt was in the cabinet above the stove, which neither one of us could reach anyway without a chair. We both looked at each other, asking each other what we should do. "FLOUR! FLOUR WOULD WORK!" I yelled. But before we could get to the flour, the fire put itself out. We discovered that Gagoo had left a meat fork in the oven. The handle had burnt off. My initial response was that now I knew what to buy her for Christmas, but she quickly replied that I'd never find another one like this. It was an antique. We put the smoldering fork in the sink, waited for the laughter to subside, and continued our work.

Soon Gagoo asked me to check on the rolls that were in the oven. She was afraid that the bottoms were burning. I opened the oven door and saw that the tops of the rolls were burnt. I figured the whole darn roll had to be burnt too, but when we took one out, we saw that the bottoms weren't even done. We checked the corn pudding which was also in the oven and saw that the top of it was burnt too. We eventually realized that Gagoo had set the oven on broil. I'm beginning to question her sanity.

At some point I ran home to put on clean clothes (that were still a little damp). Soon the rest of the family (minus Kim's crew) showed up. We ate lunch, did some crafts (ok, I did some crafts with Quincy and Erin), and waited for the egg hunt. Gagoo had told me earlier that I didn't have to hunt eggs if I didn't want to. So when it came time for the egg hunt, I volunteered to help hide the eggs. Gagoo said, "No! You have to find them!" So I sat patiently and waited for my instructions. Now, in order to fully appreciate an Easter egg hunt at Gagoo's, you really have to be there, but I'll do my best to describe it. Gagoo has a huge assortment of plastic eggs. She rarely buys new ones. Each grandchild gets 12 of a certain type of egg. For example, I was to find all the green eggs, Winston's eggs looked like various types of balls, and Owen had camo eggs. It isn't always that straightforward though. Katie's eggs were a variety of colors, but had swirls or dots on them. Nicholas was to find all the shiny eggs, but not the green shiny eggs because those were mine. Maggie's eggs were all different colors, but had faces on them. Half the time we weren't even sure if the eggs we found were really our own. This year was a little different. About 10 of our eggs had numbers in them. We had to take the number to my mom, who would then give us the prize corresponding to that number. It was fun!

Next was the kids' turn to hide our parents' bags. We decided to play a trick on them. We got an extra bag, filled it with rocks, wrote "GOTCHA!" on it, and put it in plain sight on top of the floodwall. Then we let the parents loose. I always hide Mom's in an easy spot, but she always has to have help to find it. I think she really would have found it on her own this time if Dad hadn't gotten to it first. J.T. was the one that took the floodwall bait. He ran all the way to the top, saw what it said, and sent it flying over the floodwall.

Aside from some minor family drama and my mom not feeling well, it was a great Easter. I'm sad that I won't get to spend much time with my family this summer, and can't wait til the next family get-together.