The Day Before Easter

Easter is coming up, so I'm going to remember what I can about the day before the holiday. In my family, most of the secular celebrating occurs on Saturday rather than Easter Sunday itself.

2012. I went out to my car to head home. My mom called and let me know that they were getting home from southern Utah, and I hadn't even left yet. On my windshield was a wrinkled note from Morgan Crockett that said he had backed into my car. I looked and there was indeed a scratch on the back bumper. But my brother and I both put scratches on both sides of the front bumper, so the back scratch just matched the rest of it. I listened to the MoTab Praise to the Man album on my way home. When I got home, my niece Allie came up to me and said, completely shocked, "The Easter Bunny already came!" We searched for Easter eggs; there were lots. There were plastic candy-filled eggs and real confetti-filled eggs. I of course was interested in the candy eggs, but I was surprised that Allie liked the confetti eggs. We broke the confetti eggs on each other, and we were finding confetti for months after (and filled eggs as well). I think we colored eggs. At some point that day my dad lost a tooth. We ate tacos for dinner and made sugar cookies with blue frosting. That night, after everyone went to bed, I went downstairs and watched Here Comes Peter Cottontail, eating a bunch of candy. I finished my Easter Baby Bottle Pop. After the show was over, I decided to watch some of the DVD's special features that I hadn't seen. They were these cheesy kid stories set to partly animated pictures. I think I did situps as I watched them.

2011. I actually don't remember much about this day. We got our Easter baskets and Allie got some Disney Princess Squinkies. I suspect this was the time that my aunt and cousins came to our house. My mom gave my cousin Quin the toy sword he had asked her to buy at Disneyland; he began playing with it. We showed them all the Nightmare Before Christmas paraphernalia I got; Quin said, "Best deck of cards ever." This might be the year that when I was watching Here Comes Peter Cottontail, Susanne said that Grandma Judy always let them watch it on TV and she hated it.

2010. It was general conference. In the morning I saw my Easter basket that had my new shirts and blue plaid shorts in it. I was kind of disappointed that those were my only gifts, since I had got those the day before--there were no surprises. I think we did some grocery shopping and I got a haircut in the morning before the first session. And I think after the first session we had our Easter festivities. Allie didn't want to stay with us because of general conference; Matt said that she had been telling them all about it. We watched Here Comes Peter Cottontail. I think my dad and I went to the Eagleridge building for the Priesthood session.

2009. Elder Kitchen and I had dinner with a member--none of his family was home, so it was just three of us at dinner. We had a barbecue and strawberry shortcake. Elder Kitchen asked him if he could drive us over to our ward's Easter activity--for some reason they held it at another building in our stake than the one our ward attended. They had an egg gathering activity; we gathered some eggs, and Elder Kitchen got one of the "special" eggs, so he gave it to me. These "special" eggs were for a presentation. Each egg had a little prop and a scripture; collectively it told the Easter story. Mine was a nail to represent the Crucifixion. Someone got a dice to represent them casting lots for Jesus's garment; I thought the dice was a bit of a stretch. (I know that die is the singular form, but that just sounds weird.) Sister Tanner's scripture talked about Pilate, and she pronounced it "pih-LAH-tee," like the exercise program Pilates without the s, but she should have pronounced it "pilot." The Tanners drove us home; we crammed into their van with their three kids. I remember at some point that night Elder Kitchen commented about Sister Tanner's pronunciation of Pilate. I remember walking along Ramsey Road. I kind of wanted to go to the Hico gas station, since it would be my last chance to get some Easter treat, like maybe jelly beans or lavender-colored Sno-Balls, but we didn't end up going there. I can't remember what we did the rest of the night.

2008. In the morning Elder Condie and I helped out at the Greenbluff Ward Primary activity. They put us in charge of one game, and a a little girl who was 4 or 5 came up to me and said, "You're a handsome nice man." I later told Elder Condie about it; he said he noticed that I had been laughing after she talked to me. I asked Brother Mears if we could visit his family to teach his family the next installment of the Member Missionary Training Center. He said they were OK (he didn't like me). There was a nonmember there whose husband was an inactive member, and I think the husband was the brother of Brother Mears. The wife was Jewish, but she didn't mind her kids participating in our Easter party. In one of the places we talked about the Resurrection and one kid talked about how Jesus ate fish and honeycomb. After the activity we went to Subway; a member owned that store and gave us free Subway once a week. One of the girls working there said cheerfully to us, "Do Mormons celebrate Easter?" She said she was going to ask the owner but didn't. We told her we did. She said, "I was talking to some people and they said that Mormons don't celebrate Easter; I told them they do, they just don't celebrate with eggs and stuff." Elder Condie told her that we had in fact just come from an activity at our church involving eggs. That day we were supposed to be helping an inactive sister move stuff from her storage unit into her apartment. We had asked the Northpointe Ward to help us, but no one had said anything about helping us, so I threw a bit of a hissy fit in our bedroom. Then I called Brother Cummins, who was the ward clerk, and asked him if he knew of anyone who would be able to help us. He said he would. So we drove down to Spokane to the woman's storage unit. After we had finished up, we were backing up and I was thinking about how nice it was not to have to back him up (since missionaries always have to stand outside and guide people when they back up). Then he backed into a pickup truck. There was a big dent in it. Then he went back into the storage unit to find the owners of the truck. We were going with him, but he said forcefully, "Stay with the car." I told Elder Condie about what I had been thinking about backing. Brother Cummins came back with the truck owner, who was very nice and understanding. Brother Cummins said, "I'm really embarrassed about this," and the owner said it was OK. When Brother Cummins got back in the car, Elder Condie told him that we all had been thinking that if we had done something different, that wouldn't have happened. We got back home, and I think there was a little snowstorm. I shoveled the snow, but that was unnecessary, because it was warm enough that all the snow melted quickly. The Welshes (whom we lived with) made us an Easter dinner, including strawberry shortcake. That night we had a lesson with our investigators Duane and Vickie. Vickie had made us pink rabbit-shaped sugar cookies and sent them home with us in a large Ziploc bag. I think this was the night we brought our Hispanic ward missionary with us, and we talked about the degrees of glory. The ward missionary said that he thought there were infinite sublevels in the three kingdoms.

2007. My sister and niece and I got on a plane back to Salt Lake from Nashville. Since my ticket had been bought at a different time and it was a full flight, I had to sit near the back of the plane and Susanne and Allie sat toward the front. I was reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for my AP English class and eating Easter candy. Afterward Susanne told me that Allie didn't like the airplane and kept asking about me. We came home and were preparing to watch Here Comes Peter Cottontail. Susanne was on the phone with her boyfriend of the time, Darrin, and asking him if he knew that special. Then she started describing it in detail, and Darrin stopped caring when she got to the part about Irontail feeding gum to Peter's clock.

2006. It was our last day in Moab. I remember playing with Allie at the KOA's playground. She put her hands around a hanging bar. I was surprised that I could take my arms away and she was hanging by herself. Then she'd let go and I would catch her. Then we got in the car and drove. I think we took a side trip to Fillmore. Allie got a little restless in the car. When we got home, I got ready to take a shower. I weighed myself and wondered if I had lost any weight on the trip (due to the hiking), but instead I discovered that I had in fact gained weight. It was then that I vowed that I would only eat candies and desserts when they were in season (prior to that, I had allowed myself to eat nonseasonal things in limited quantities.) My new goal was put to the test that day because our home teacher Christian Ulmer brought us a chocolate pie from Marie Callendar's. I can't remember if I ended up succumbing to the temptation or not. We got our Easter presents; I got Wallace and Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and a deck of Easter-egg-shaped playing cards. I think we watched my new movie and I complained about how it was inferior to Corpse Bride. Then I remember my mom talking to David on MSN chat and she told him that I was disappointed (I think because it wasn't a traditional Easter). He said "Poor Frankfurt." Then she told him they got me the Wallace and Gromit movie and he said "POOR Frankfurt" (because he knew my opinions on the Wallace and Gromit/Corpse Bride thing).

2005. We were in Fillmore. We went to Fillmore's Easter egg event. I remember seeing some kids with jack-o-lantern buckets to collect eggs. I thought that was a good idea to include in the Easter episode of my fictitious TV show. We were talking with my aunt Sarena and my cousin-in-law Kalia (and maybe some other cousins). My mom told Sarena about an awkward incident with Allie that I didn't think was funny. Kalia asked Susanne something about Allie, and Susanne told her, "I found out yesterday that she knows what sound a dog makes" (I had first heard her say "woof" the day before). Kalia talked about her son Damen (who was almost Allie's age) also knowing what dogs said. My aunt Sarena was talking about how they weren't going to go to the sand dunes. Suddenly there was a big wind that blew some snow from the trees onto us. My mom said it was Grandpa Boyd getting mad at us for not going to the sand dunes. Then we went back to Grandma Judy's house; my mom told her about the wind incident and I told her about the kids with the Halloween buckets. We went on a little drive in the Suburban while listening to a Carpenters CD; at the song "Solitaire" I said that Clay Aiken had sung that song on American Idol a few years earlier. We drove past a big sand dune where some people were playing but we didn't stop.

2004. We were at the sand dunes. I got my dragon kite to fly and I buried the base in the sand so that it could fly itself (it was quite windy). I remember driving my grandpa's four-wheeler really slow with Ya-ping on the back. I also had my first driving lesson. I drove for quite a while at probably less than five miles an hour and my grandpa kept telling me which way to steer. Eventually he told me to stop. Then he drove back and I felt dumb that it only took a few minutes to drive back when it had taken me so long because I was going so slow. I remember my aunt Terri liking my nickname for Allie, "Cute-iful." Grandpa hugged or danced or something with my cousin Krishelle and alluded to the fact that he wouldn't be around much longer (it was in fact his last Easter).

2003. This might have actually been on Friday, but it might have been Saturday. I remember coloring eggs in the kitchen and watching Gilligan's Island; it was one of the episodes with Wrongway Feldman. 

2001. We took my cousin Joey, from my mom's side, down to Fillmore with us to be with my dad's family. We had donuts in our red Jeep for the ride down. When we got to Fillmore my grandma asked if he was Sue's son. I can't remember what else happened.

2000. I took a shower in the morning before we headed out in our red Jeep to pick up my cousins Peter and Jesse to go down to Fillmore. Before we picked them up, we stopped at a Ream's store near their house and bought some kite string. I also noticed a ball made out of a crystally, squishy plastic material. It didn't bounce well, so I didn't understand why they would make a ball out of it. We picked up Jesse and Peter. Then we drove down. I remember making some comment about smelling my deodorant. Jesse and Peter both seemed disgusted, but I said it wasn't smelly because it was meant to prevent me from smelling. We passed a "G" on a mountainside. I asked what it stood for; my mom said maybe it stood for Pleasant Grove. I said, "Then why doesn't it say PG?" She said that that could stand for pregnant, which I found quite funny. Then I said it could also stand for parental guidance, and Peter said that it could be PG like in movies, and I told him that's what parental guidance was. I had brought the "Official Snoopy Tosserino" (Frisbee) I had inherited from my maternal grandparents and played it with Peter. I kept snapping pictures. David buried Peter in the sand, and then I wanted to be buried. At one point my cousin Terrill talked about how he wanted to go over to the other sand dune. I told him it was cool. Then I asked him if he meant another sand dune or just the other side of that sand dune. I hadn't been to the other sand dune, just the other side of the one we were at. I thought I was so adventurous going to the other side of this tiny barchan sand dune. At one point there was a little rainstorm and the sand got wet and dark. Then Peter was jumping in the sand, and the dry light sand was intermixing with the dark wet sand. He said, "Yay! White skin is winning over black skin!" I told him that was an inappropriate thing to say, and he said that of course he would want white skin to win, since he was white. Then we left and made a stop at my paternal grandparents' house before the long trip back to Salt Lake. We probably listened to tapes of Abbey Road and that tape that had "One Tin Soldier" on it--I was obsessed with that song. I remember being cold, but my mom wouldn't let me turn the heat up because she needed it cold to stay awake.

1999. My cousin April was with us that morning for our Easter festivities. My mom had bought her a travel reading lamp. I got a VHS of It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown. I went down and watched it. As the Easter morning scene started, April said that that was one of her favorite Beethoven pieces. She laughed when Woodstock laid on the egg he got. My brother said something about the line "Never trust a man with a blanket." I remember saying, "I didn't know that girl [Marcie] was dumb," and he told me she was actually smart. Then we drove down to Fillmore; we probably listened to conference in the car. I was wearing a pink Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles t-shirt, but I covered up the picture with a green sweater vest. I cared about the pink (for Easter), not the picture. While everyone must have been watching conference, I went in one of the side rooms and saw that Here Comes Peter Cottontail was on the Fox Family Channel. I remember getting annoyed with all the commercial breaks and thinking that they couldn't keep doing that, because they couldn't take much out. (Which was false; they actually could take a lot out.) The promos for the special had the scene where Peter skates the shape of a heart into the ice and makes it light up. That night I was playing the Game Boy and my grandparents' friends came over and my grandma said to her friend, "They sure love those games, don't they."

1998. Intuition tells me that this event occurred in 1998, but I'm actually not sure if it happened at this time. My cousin Rayce and I were hanging out at my family's trailer, which was parked in the backyard of my grandparents' house. He asked me if I believed in the Easter Bunny, because he didn't. I told him I didn't. I said, "I remember thinking, 'How can one man [Santa] deliver presents all over the world in one night?'" Rayce said, "He stops time. I believe in him."

1997. I had wanted my Easter basket hidden this year, instead of just the eggs. My basket was the only hidden one (it was hidden behind some plants). I got a St. Patrick's Day flag since the wind had torn mine. Our Easter grass was this green cottony stuff that was less messy than the typical plastic kind. Then we went to Fillmore; maybe this was the year when I saw my cousins' eggs that had plastic decorative bands around them. I think one egg cracked at the hard interdune (the ground behind a sand dune--I'm glad I know all these geological terms now).

1996. This might be the time I got my springy (as in, it was made of springs) bouncy ball.

1994. I was excited to get a crocodile-shaped bottle of bubbles. I also got a Sesame Street kite and my brother got a more mature kite. We went to Fillmore and I think we participated in the community egg hunt. I got a big marshmallow stick and it was said that I couldn't get it on the seat of my uncle Ken's car. I remember being at the sand dunes and holding my kite (I doubt I was the one who got it in the air) and my aunt Kim talking to me. I think I was a little embarrassed to have such a "babyish" kite.

1993. We got our baskets downstairs. All three of us kids got trolls--I got a worker troll, my brother got a doctor troll, and my sister got a BYU cheerleader troll. We had our egg hunt down there; we had these weird marshmallow-esque eggs to find. There was a blue one in the windowsill of my dad's workroom.

1991. I don't remember anything about this day--I was only two years old--but I do remember seeing a family video that depicted this day. We were at my maternal grandparents' house coloring eggs. We had these rabbit-shaped things that you would put in water and they would dissolve and make the dye. My mom says this was right when we moved into our new house.

I am quite certain that after posting this I will remember more details.

Related posts:
 Those Easter Morns
A year of holiday memories