Holidays are wonderful but sometimes on top of life’s events can be almost too much!
This week brings Easter and with it celebrations and family traditions: church on Good Friday; our annual egg dying and pizza party, individual Easter baskets filled with candy and a family one with dyed eggs for our Easter breakfast with sausage biscuits and orange juice. Church on Easter is followed in the late afternoon by a special Easter ham dinner. We love holidays for they are times that our family comes together and reunites us, however briefly!
But Easter is only part of what is in season for us this year. We are also preparing for my youngest daughter to return home for an extended stay through the summer or longer. This doesn’t surprise us. “Boomerang children” are the trend these days, finishing college only to find that the jobs available aren’t the sort to support college loans as well as independent living and we are looking forward to having her back home with us for a time. With her move home however comes a house cleaning job of immense proportions, for we have moved into what would be her space and now are having to clean, pare down, consolidate and push out the walls as far as we can to “make room” for her.
Of course, life doesn’t slow down for such events, nor are holidays cancelled. A two day business trip for my husband is squeezed in along with our monthly house cleaners day as well as my operation of “fast and furious” that involves no guns, but creative messes and clutter everywhere in preparation for the upcoming Mother’s Day weekend show and sale.
I fall back to old ways of dealing with tasks too big to be accomplished in one fell swoop. Being a retired special ed consultant, among other professions, I make do-lists with minute tasks that can be crossed off easily with built in tangible reward-naps sandwiched in, designed to eliminate becoming overwhelmed, and exhausted.
I surprise myself how much gets done by taking it in incremental steps and I even do the Easter baskets ahead, though thanks to Zeldie, our cat who is attracted to the artificial Easter grass they are being stored in plastic grocery bags. Warning: I have noted that if done too early the candy seems to be thinned a bit by Easter and if small children are about, must be kept hidden to keep the holiday magic of the Easter Bunny and alive!
Holiday traditions are important family events and I am interested to know how my readers celebrate Easter, Passover or the coming of the Spring Season at your house.
