When life throws curve balls, you change traditions a little

Sometimes, things just don't go like you expect them to. We are having one of those times. We spent several years trying to patch things ... make people happy. Letting toxicity in and dictate how we led our lives. Cringed every time we made plans and required extra anxiety medication for me when events took place. This is no way to live.

Finally, we chose happy. We chose to do what made our family work and we stuck to our boundaries. However, with this choice came the knowledge that not everyone would agree with our decision. But you know what, not everyone is in our family. Not everyone is there day in and day out dealing with the aftermath of decisions. We have handled the change extremely well, until holidays throw the curve balls.


My husband and I knew from the get go that when we followed the wishes of our children, that we were going to see a massive fall out. The children wouldn't fully understand that fallout until holidays came and reared their ugly head. Why? Because holidays have always been the time when we get family together and celebrate. But when you have family that no longer wishes to celebrate with you, then you deal with pain and heartache. How do you handle that?

I'll tell you what you do. You pull your children in and you ask them, what is it that you liked (outside of just simple company) that we can incorporate into our tradition. What I heard as responses warmed my heart.

Peanut - spending time with family
Bullfrog - money in the eggs
Monkey - coloring eggs
Turtle - *not even asked as this is the first Easter she REALLY remembers*

Therefore, we started Saturday off with me working preparing taxes. We had planned to do an egg hunt with KCKCC, but it rained and they cancelled. After I finished for the day with taxes, picked up husband and we went shopping for eggs & candy. We held our own egg hunt out in the yard. We had 2 eggs with a dollar in it, one fun clear egg, one M&M egg, and then 5 regular candy filled eggs.

After that, the kids dyed 16 hard-boiled eggs while I made Easter Dinner. I didn't photograph the dinner. But we had lamb, steamed veggies, and then I made beef short ribs & stuffed mushrooms for the adults.

The kids absolutely LOVED how vibrant the colors came out this year. I added 1 1/2 TBS of vinegar to each of the cups with the dye tablets and it was great. They were even able to make multi-colored eggs. However, as you can see ... Monkey stuck with her blue and Turtle stuck to her green. Can't tear them away from their favorite colors ... not even offering other colors will make a difference. My son decided to make a really red one that had cracked sides (we were going for the dragon egg effect - that didn't really work but that's okay). He ended up with an egg that looked like an eyeball, making the zombie freak ecstatic!

After everyone was tucked into bed ... the Easter Bunny came to visit. The Easter Bunny was SUPER thankful that a super store had great pre-made baskets that matched the desires of each child so perfectly. Overall ... it was a huge success and not one child brought up the lack of people at our celebration. I have a feeling the exact same approach will help us get through the next few holidays just fine. Pulling together as a family.