Happy Easter!!!!

I love Easter. Really, I think its the best holiday. It may be because I have such great memories associated with Easter. Easter is a pretty major holiday back home.

Let me take you back into the Easters of my childhood: Easter in South Africa is in the Autumn. The weather is barely starting to cool, the days are just starting to shorten, and the children have a week off school. For the adults, Easter is a 4 day weekend. The shops are stocked with fresh Hot Cross Buns, marshmallow Easter eggs, and the highly coveted White Beacon Eggs.

My family and my friend Jenni's family would pack up the car, bakkie (truck) and caravans and go camping in the mountains along the Bainskloof pass. The saturday before Easter, my mom and Jen's mom would take a walk around the mountains leaving clue's for us to find. The next morning we would all wake up bright and early and start scampering around the mountains searching for and solving the clues left for us the day before. While we were out searching for clues our parents would hide our eggs around our campsite, in trees, under rocks etc. (if they hid them the night before the baboons would get them). We would then all return to the site for the big egg hunt. Sometimes we would find lost eggs from the year before, but mostly we would just have fun. The rest of the day would be spent in chocolatey, sugary bliss, knowing that we didn't have school the next day. It invariably rained one of the days over the Easter weekend, which meant that all the mountain streams were in flood. We had some really exciting times tubing down the flooded streams, and a few really hairy occassions when Darren and my cousin Jason almost killed themselves. But, because no one was actually hurt those are now fond memories.




A couple of pictures of the mountians along the Bainskloof pass - Memories of Easters Past.

I only wish that I can make Easter as significant and enjoyable for my kids as my parents made it for us!