An Isenbarger Family Easter Celebration

A fairly new tradition for our family, and a VERY popular one, is to head up to Leslie and Rick's farm in Brookston for Easter dinner and an Easter egg hunt.

All the local family comes and brings a dish to share, while Rick and Leslie cook a ham or turkey and hide 100+ Easter eggs. (After stuffing each one chock full of candy.)

Steve, Eric, Cindie, Vanessa, Curt, Lukie, Ian, Lisa, Mila, me, Rick, Jenny, and Craig. A very happy Eddie sits in front.

Leslie and Rick convert their cheesemaking room into a dining hall where we all gather together for dinner.  

Jenny, Leslie, and Ian all have birthdays in April so we also celebrate their birthdays on Easter. 

Gathering in the kitchen before the buffet opens. Lisa, Jenny, Curt, Vanessa, Ian, and Leslie.

The meats are being cooked out in the shop and aren't on the serving table yet. (Where are we going to put them??) Craig, Cindie, Eric, Lisa, Jenny, Curt, and Vanessa.

Steve and me. He's a good big brother. (Although I still haven't forgiven him for the Creepy Crawler spiders he made and put in my bed when we were kids...  Traumatized for life!! LOL)

Next up after dinner was the annual family Easter egg hunt. There are two divisions: adults and kids. (Craig asked if he could have a senior citizen division; nice try, honey!)

This year's prizes for the winners was gourmet carmel corn from local candy shop, Wolf's.

Needless to say, everyone was all in for those two prizes!

Jenny especially hoped to win, so she lined up in a starter's position next to Ian, ready to beat him to the hidden eggs. (She does have long legs and is pretty fast...)

"C'mon! Call 'go'! My knees are starting to hurt!" (But those knees! Ouch!)

Three acres of the farm are fenced off from the horse pasture, and that is where all the eggs are hidden. Everyone spreads out as they take off.

It takes a while but eventually we find most of them. (Although Les and Rick will find more that were missed in the coming weeks.)

Methinks Curt is eying his kids' bags of eggs and hoping for a handout...

Once all of us are up by the house again, we count our eggs and determine the winners - whoever has found the most gets the prize. Lisa and Mila were this year's winners.

And then, since we are all starved (::cough cough::) we open some of the eggs and eat what we like or trade for something we'd prefer.

Lukie was pretty happy with his haul!

"You beat me?? I still have my Creepy Crawler machine, Lynn..."

Despite having had dinner and then copious amounts of candy, there is yet another round of food to come - dessert. (Yeah. I know.)

We have birthday cakes and Hershey Pie to nosh on. (Hershey Pie is such a big tradition in our family, I found out later that evening that all six of our kids had made it for their own Easter celebrations! Here's the recipe.)

We also had another old family favorite - Whipped Cream Stack Ups. (Recipe: whip cream until very firm, sandwich between vanilla wafers, refrigerate, eat. Easy peasy. Stacks of 3-4 vanilla wafers work best, but have at it if you wish!)

After the birthday celebrations, we are all stuffed and sleepy. 

Lukie had cuddled up against me and was nodding off, but he awoke just as our picture was taken.

Eddie opened his eyes and sat up in time for one last picture and then we all packed up and left for home.

He was fast asleep almost immediately.

It was such a fun day. And even better, guess who has a piece of Hershey Pie in the fridge? 

It's what breakfast is all about! 

The Trick or Treat Blitz

First post of the day.

Well. Those 16 bags of candy

have been reduced to this.

We were inundated last night! (Craig likes Snickers and I like 3 Musketeers so we've got those leftovers covered.)

Even after we'd turned off the outdoor lights, our doorbell continued to ring. 

Blame Teacher Daughter Lisa. She teaches in the elementary school that the kids in our neighborhood attend, and many of them know that we are her parents. Every year (after clearing it with us) she tells her current class that she will be handing out special treats she's made up just for them at our house from 5:30 to 6:30. Our doorbell rings constantly during that time. (She goes home to hand out candy in her own neighborhood after that.) 

Former students drop by to see her, too, but they don't always stay in that hour-long time frame. (Some current ones can't make that time, either.) I can always tell those trick or treaters who were in her class - they either ask for her or they see Pepper at my side and cry, "Pepper! I remember her! She came into our class and I got to read to her!" 

Lisa's students get a double bonus as we give them treats, too, when they ring our bell. Between Lisa's students and the neighborhood kiddos, we also hand out candy to a lot of non-neighborhood kids who trick or treat in our neighborhood. So yeah, we needed those sixteen bags of candy. 

I have to say, the kids that dropped by, be they Lisa's students, neighborhood kids, or from somewhere else, were polite and friendly, with more than one turning back as they left my porch to call, "Thank you! Happy Halloween!"

You are more than welcome, kids. And thank YOU.

More coming in a second post. Stay 'tooned!

Hippity Hoppity, Easter's On Its Way

The Easter Bunny who used to come to our home (me) might have appreciated something like this basket that I found in Walmart yesterday.

Prepacked with assorted goodies and a horse and rider as gifts, all wrapped up in cellophane and ready to go.

But with six kids at home and a stay-at-home mom Easter Bunny, those $15 easy-peasy baskets-to-go were out of reach. (How about that for a record setting number of hyphens in a sentence? LOL)

Instead, I would buy several bags of candy and pull out the kids' baskets that they reused every year, get up very early, and painstakingly count EVERY. SINGLE. PIECE. of candy to be sure everyone got the same amount.

The stay-at-home mom Santa Claus did the same thing.

Todd and Sarah helping me with the count this past Christmas.

Tomorrow the Easter Bunny only has a few baskets to pack but even though she looked at those tempting pre-packaged Walmart baskets yesterday, she stuck with tradition and came home with bags of candy to separate and count.

But what if there is an odd number of pieces and they can't be sorted fairly? Not to worry; the Easter Bunny will do what she always does.

Eat the leftovers!

A Mystery Box Arrives

Shannon Rodgers is a very generous person. She sent me an unexpected mystery box in the mail after the snow and ice kept me from attending the February Great Lakes Congress Show.

Inside were some fun goodies.

A wooden Appaloosa puzzle.

The yummiest candy bar (which was gone just an hour or so after I opened Shannon's box, haha!)

And something wrapped in tissue paper.

The neatest metal circus horse! And one I had never seen before!

Shannon, thank you so much for the box of gifts! I love it all! And I am busy doing research on the little metal horse trying to figure out its history and manufacturer.

Stay 'tooned!

Another "Shot" at this & Another Mistaken Identity

I have two shot glasses, not just the one I showed yesterday. I was more "informed" this time when I bought the second shot glass, but my favorite breeds are Appaloosas, Tennessee Walkers, and Lippizaners, so I could not resist.

Besides, I'd learned that shot glasses make great toothpick holders!

I have another Lippizaner piece that was also not the trinket or candy dish that I thought it was when I purchased it. Can you tell what this lovely piece really is for?

It's china and in the same red, gold, and black colors of the Lippizaner shot glass.

Wien, the maker's mark on the back , means "Vienna" and I think the other word means "handmade."

Three different stallions are represented, one doing the capriole,

 

another doing the levade, 

and the third one piaffing.

I had had that trinket/candy dish on display in my living room for several years before I figured out what it really was. While dusting one day, I picked it up and ran my finger around the gold rim and into the depressions.

Those depressions gave it away. We'd had little dishes with similar depressions in them that were set out on tables when I was a very little girl. This wasn't a trinket or a candy dish - it was an ash tray!

Smokers would perch their lit cigarettes in the depressions when they wanted their hands free to eat, play cards, etc. The dish would catch ashes from the burning cigarettes and protect the furniture from burns.

My parents quit smoking when I was very small and the ash trays were removed from the house, so my memory of them is pretty foggy. Still, there was enough of a memory left to help me realize what my lovely china piece was. Now it holds candy or my rings in it and continues to be displayed in my living room. 

More tomorrow so stay 'tooned!