Growing up, "visiting family" meant going to Wisconsin. Lots and lots of my extended family live in Wisconsin, and those that didn't would also periodically return to visit the dairy state. This meant that in order to see my cousins that didn't live in Wisconsin, we needed to match up our yearly trip with their yearly trip - and that only happened some of the time.
Luckily now that we live in Texas, we are able to drive to see some of this extended family who live in our home state. I have a number of cousins, aunt and uncles that live across the major metro cities in Texas, so now we can visit family more than once a year, and spend weekends or other small gatherings together without any major travel involved. This is what we did for Easter. We headed due north for a nice weekend with cousins, staying with my Aunt Linn and Uncle Greg. As an extra bonus for the holiday, we had additional cousins come in from Colorado to match nicely with our kids and keep us out far too late one of the nights.
My uncle John invited us to an Easter egg hunt and party where we made the MAJOR mistake of arriving 1 minute late. This started our Easter celebration off with utter chaos - "We're not going to get
ANY eggs!!!!" - and a few tears. The joy of Easter. Note the lack of eggs in Gretchen's basket. We learned a bit about gratitude and appreciation that morning, and the tears quickly dried when her sweet cousins offered to share the melted molten lava chocolate candy that comes from holding an egg hunt in Texas at midday.
Here is 40 year veteran Ranger's employee Papa John with some of the kid troop. All smiles, and a beautiful day.
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| Look at the soft side of Uncle John! |
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| Gretchen and Justice are two peas in a pod. Insta-friends, like-minded, it's really great to watch them together. |
The end of the egg hunt was a brilliantly crafted raffle. Each child received a ticket, waited for their number, and then EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM won. The ticket dictated the order in which they could choose their present, but every child left with a gift. Incredible.
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| Waiting for raffle numbers |
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| WINNER!! |
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| Beautiful Julia calling out winning numbers |
The rest of our day was spent at my cousin's gorgeous new pool, dying eggs and grilling out. Lots of fun, laughs and I even snuck in a nap. It was a great weekend, with lots of plans to see these cousins far more than once a year.
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| Wearing gloves during egg-dying: J'Vette's mom-mastery! |
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| The water was juuuuust chilly enough to keep this one on the side. |
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| 38 years young |
We left early enough on Sunday morning to make it back home and celebrate Daddy's birthday. Happy Birthday Daddy! Happy Easter Everyone!
My uncle John invited us to an Easter egg hunt and party where we made the MAJOR mistake of arriving 1 minute late. This started our Easter celebration off with utter chaos - "We're not going to get ANY eggs!!!!" - and a few tears. The joy of Easter. Note the lack of eggs in Gretchen's basket. We learned a bit about gratitude and appreciation that morning, and the tears quickly dried when her sweet cousins offered to share the melted molten lava chocolate candy that comes from holding an egg hunt in Texas at midday. 
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