Easter 2011

I'm a little bit late for posting about Easter festivities, but better late than never, right? This year we spent Easter in Worland; we went up early and spent the night at my parents' house on Saturday, then went to church in our old ward. Afterwards, we came home and had our traditional Easter dinner of ham, funeral potatoes, rolls, rainbow Jell-o and frog-eye salad.

It's depressing that this is all I have to write about how we spent our holiday. There were no eggs to dye, no egg hunt on the front lawn, no frilly Easter dress, only one Easter basket, and no finger prints in the Jell-o. It's amazing how differently the holidays pass us now. We still feel an overwhelming sense of guilt for celebrating and having a good time when Kerrigan isn't there to enjoy it with us. We know that we have to move on in life and live like she would have wanted us to. In order to do this, I try to incorporate a little of her into holidays and family gatherings. For example, I was cleaning out kitchen cupboards during the week before Easter and came across a bag of the pastel colored, fruit flavored marshmallows that Kerrigan had begged me to buy way back in September. I couldn't bring myself to throw them away, so I incorporated them into our frog-eye salad. One of the hardest things for me was making the rainbow Jell-o salad. She l-o-v-e-d picking out the Jell-o colors and then telling me which order they went in. She loved it when I got our her stool and she got to put 5 handfuls of marshmallows into the Jell-o mix. Always 5 handfuls because her hands were so tiny! It was also one of the last activities that she and I had done together: making Jell-o salad for Thanksgiving. But we also have to look at Easter as the reason why we are a forever family. Because the Savior atoned for us and paved the way for the resurrection, our little girl will live again, and we will be together forever.

On a happier note, here's a few pictures of Jasper's first Easter:

We also got to carry on the Foulger family tradition of the first pickle. In tribute to my grandma Foulger, when the grandkids are about 4-5 months old, Grandpa gets the privilege of giving them their first taste of food (other than milk or cereal) by way of a pickle. I couldn't help but compare Jasper's face to Kerrigan's. Jasper wasn't too fond of the pickle...Kerrigan, on the other hand, went to town on the darn thing once she got over the initial shock of it.