Easter Fun....

Okay, Kekoa is sleeping at my feet right now, so I wanted to use this time to play a little bit of catch up. Yes puppy training, playing, and loving is keeping me on my toes right now. But so is all of this Internet stuff. When I canceled our land line and moved the Internet over to the cable, I had to change servers. That meant that I had to also change browsers; sigh...... which means I am in process of building up my bookmarked web pages again. I am working on getting to each blog friend, re-save the site, and then of course reading thru fun lives and say my hellos. I do hope I will be caught up with everyone by the end of the week.

In the mean time, I promised to share a bit of our Easter fun.

The kids certainly are not little anymore so the usual egg hunt is a bit on the boring side. But that has never stopped my mom from creating a whole afternoon of smiles and giggles.

Here is part of our group playing a game called "Pretzels". There were two teams involved. Each team had to have one team member sit in a chair and cover their head with whipped cream. Then the rest of the team mates would throw pretzels at them with hopes of getting as many as possible to stick to their heads.



There was a game called "Password". In that game a team mate had to get the other members of the team to guess a word by using only 1 word clues. For each time there was a wrong guess, there was a consequence to be delivered. They had to do things like mime being locked in a box and figure out a strategy to get out or sing the ABC's backwards.

There was a game called "Crackhead". Each player had to choose one of the twelve eggs located in the special basket. Then they had to choose a friend to crack that egg over their head. 3 of the eggs were secretly hard boiled and the other 9 were raw.

That is Puddin' (a.k.a Rosie-girl for my long time blog readers) sitting there with the funny expression on her face. Even with the protective cap and plastic bag, that raw egg still feels awfully cold and slimy.

Those little blue hats that you have seen in the pictures served as protection from eggs and whipped cream but they were also labeled as their "thinking caps". So they had to have them on before they could give a correct answer to anything.

Doesn't this look interesting? The goal: two teams raced to get their team mate (victim) firmly placed on the garage door. That is my Pippin with the tape over her mouth. She was loudly protesting in shock at being picked as the smallest person on the team and therefore the most logical for wall sticking. Her team mates decided they could work faster if they didn't have to listen to her.

Here is the other team's wall sticker. They won.

It was such an amazing day. All the fun and all the food and all the relationships made it a memorable time for everyone.

Of course, the games and food were not the point of this glorious Easter celebration. They were just an additional perk. Being together in honor of the sacrifice that God and Jesus was the whole point of the day.

Heart Matters...

No matter what you sit down to watch, whether in your home for a 30 minute segment or in a theatre for a 2.5 hour event, Hollywood is great. It is great because you can escape reality for a bit. You may be drawn to drama, comedy, or action....it is all the same in the sense that you get to live outside of yourself for a bit. In that time frame; problems are presented, played out, and wrapped up in a neat little bow of a conclusion for you...the viewer. And you can feel satisfaction, even if it was a dumb movie, that things have been solved.
But the reality is .....it is not really reality.
Life doesn't really work out the way things get portrayed on the screen. In real life, the bad guy doesn't suddenly turn to a life of repentance after get cold cocked by people who won't stand for his dramas anymore.
That is what was running thru my mind last night as I was getting ready for bed from a day of Easter celebrations and being with my family.

My family....
Some of us are a tight knit group. We support, encourage, and cheer one another on in all things. Others spiral away from that closeness and seem to do everything in their ability to sabotage that beauty.
Yesterday was a classic example of such an occasion.
I spent a good part of last night putting out fires, soothing emotional hurts and injustifications. The "what happened" details don't matter. I am sure you could insert your own family experiences here because I think we all have those kinds of people in our lives.

The heart details that keep weighing on me though is a different matter entirely.
When people lash out to swipe and hurt others, no matter how unjustified, if I retaliate with indignant anger then it solves nothing. Sure, there is a moment of satisfaction as the jerk gets his "just due". But remember the cliche 'Two wrongs don't make a right'? There is great wisdom in that phrase. The aftershocks of a verbal or even a physical fight would have affected all 28 people present. The lasting scars that people would wear would be worse then the original problem. The original offender, would not have backed down and said "oh you are right. I am sorry I have been so mean." Instead he would have been justified in his own mind at being venomous and festered even more in the future.

"How can you not want to hit him? How do you turn the other cheek over and over again?"
Believe me, it can be so hard. I don't always want to and I have definitely been known to throw out my fair share of silver-tongued poison-filled statements. But when I get to that point, like last night, that soft voice in my heart says, "He wasn't always this way. Yes he is spiteful, ugly, hurtful, and arrogant at the expense of everyone else....but he has grown into that. He is filled with arrogant pride because he has no pride. Don't fight the obvious bravado in front of you but look for the roots in heart that started it all."

I am reminded that when I pray, I must not only pray for him, but I must pray for myself as well. I must pray that I remember to look beyond the obvious. Otherwise it would be all too easy for my heart to turn to vengeance and spite. If that became the case, then my heart would be no different than his. At the end of the day, I must be able to look in the mirror and know that I have tried my best. I am responsible for my actions and choices, no matter what is thrown my way.

I don't write and share these things to say "aren't I great?"
Please know that is as far from the truth as the east is from the west. I am not all knowing or perfect. No one is. I certainly mess up...a lot.
My purpose is only to:
#1 sort thru my own feelings as I commit them to writing.
#2 Maybe someone reading this might be struggling with the same sort of issue and in some way be helped by my experience.