Speaking of Easter, SD was asking me if she's getting three baskets this year? I asked her why and she said that the Easter bunny will bring one to her Grandma's because she used to live there, and one at her mom's and one at our house. I asked her why does one child need three baskets? She didn't know but I think it's silly to give one child a basket at each house. My philosophy is that they get a basket on Easter morning, at the house they are at. Am I crazy?

DH and I may go to services with his parents and brunch. Then we have to drive three hours to pick up SD from BM's house. We don't have any small kids for an egg hunt.

i guess sometimes kids from divorced families do get stuff in both houses. maybe that's the expectations? like you get Christmas gifts in both houses.

i don't celebrate Easter but not everybody who does buys the basket. MY SIL is catholic and they do have some minor celebration going, they do egg hunt because other kids come over, but i don't think they buy my niece and nephew baskets. I know she gets like chocolate bunny or something. we all were raised in different relgions and raised our kids in different religions so we sometimes forget what we are supposed to do for what holiday for which kids. lol but i guess kids always want to get three of everything hahaha wouldn't you? :)

We do baskets for the kids every year. Usually it is not a "basket" though. We try to make it something useful. Last year we did pop-up laundry hampers with useful stuff in it. This year we did those storage bins that can go on a shelf. We have gotton them things like kites, tennis rackets, sidewalk chalk, baseballs, bats, catchers mits, and other outside stuff each year. It gets them outside in the spring and summer because they have lots to play with and it is stuff I may have bought anyways! Usually we get them one outfit each that they would really like too.

I know when my son goes to see his dads family they do holiday stuff with him and he gets more gifts, baskets, etc. My skids relatives on their bm's side send them stuff this year for holidays, but in the past they have not. Who knows if it will continue.

As a child I got stuff each year at both parents homes. Each parent wanted their own celebration with me. I don't think that I expected it like I thought it was owed to me, but I became used to it and looked forward to it.

Anyways, happy Easter to all!!!

Happy Easter, & a joyous Spring to us all!

Ima, I'm with you;
what the heck is one child going to do with 3 baskets?

Giving children gift baskets at Easter hasn't been a custom for all that long-

The first time I saw it was about 25 years ago, when my cousins were children.

Before that time, Easter was not a "mini-Christmas" complete with presents, but a springtime celebration with symbolic ceremonies & activities.

We always dyed our own eggs on Saturday (luckily we had chickens, what a bunch of eggs we messed up!), we saved our baskets from one year to the next, & we sometimes had cellophane "grass", but sometimes we picked clover.

*Maybe* we got one large chocolate bunny & everybody shared, & sometimes, especially as we got older & retail food became more common, we got jelly beans or foil-wrapped chocolate eggs.

(Do they still make "robin's eggs"? I seem to recall overstuffing myself on those things a number of times.)

The eggs or representations of eggs were hidden while we were in Sunday School, & we took our empty baskets on an Easter egg hunt.

I always had a new dress, & sometimes new patent leather shoes, & white socks with lace around the top.

I got white patent shoes one time, & I scuffed them up so badly, before we even got out of the house to go to church, that I got black patent every year after that!

fine with me, to heck with that old stay-out-of-the-dirt-sylvia nonsense...

Easter "dinner", the midday meal, was after the egg hunt, & it was usually at my grandmother's house.

I know ham is traditional in many homes, but we always had
chicken & dressing, potato salad made with sliced hardboiled eggs & fresh green onions, fresh green beans with bits of crumbled bacon, fresh yeast rolls with butter...

I'm sure there were more foods than that, but those are the things I gobbled like a starving piglet!

I'd gobble 'em today if I had a big ole plateful.

...what was the question?

Three baskets is a *lot* of baskets.

If mom & dad are providing a basket or baskets, I don't think grandparents need to spend their money on another one.

My now-ex & his ex (the kids' parents) always got together & agreed on how to divide, not multiply, the "stuff", the activities, & the celebrations.

If one bought the basket, the other would bring treats-
they always got healthy treats, no chocolate overdosing there, thank goodness.

Maybe one parent can buy the basket, grandparents can host the egg hunt, & one parent takes the kids to church?

Or someone buys the basket, someone else buys the chocolate bunny, someone else hosts "dinner"/lunch?

All y'all have a wonderful, blue-sky, fair weather week-end, & enjoy being a part of life in the springtime.

I'm a-goin' to my bro & sis-in-law's to plant trees!

My x and I try to squeeze in multiple holiday vacations -- our atittude -- whats the harm -- AS LONG AS NO ONE GIVES MY DD ANYTHING LIVING

LOL Thanks for the memories!!!!Just bought myself some Robins eggs for the nostalgia, and living things!! Had totally forgotten, got a chick for Easter when I was a girl, and when it started to fly, my mom took it to the butcher and I bawled for a week!! LOLOLOL

We got something at both parents (well, i was a teenager so an easter basket wasn't a bit deal, but youngest brother was still little). Easter bunny and Santa both came to both houses. No one child doesn't *need* 3 baskets (certainly grandma shouldn't feel obligated), but it's nice to celebrate holidays at both households and if an easter basket is part of her easter tradition I think it'd be disappointing for her to not have one at both places. Or if you think it's too much candy you could start a different tradition, but I think there should be something.

Isn't it as much for the parents as the kids, anyway? wouldn't your husband be disappointed not to have the whole easter thing with his daughter?

I know that my ex and I both love doing the traditions we had growing up with dd. Both of us did the egg dying, the egg hunt, and Easter baskets as kids. So we both do it with dd now. She loves doing it twice though she is at the age where I am not sure if we will even get another year before she comes to the realization about the fiction of the bunny and santa. We both do a christmas celebration with her and both do a thanksgiving dinner with her.

I do not see the harm and I would not want to miss one year of the tradition with dd and neither would my ex. We do alternate on who buys the holiday clothing though. One year I will take dd shopping for the christmas outfit and he will do the easter outfit. The next year we switch. So she can wear the same dressy outfit twice.

It just seems that some of these holidays get so darned 'commercialized'. When I asked SD what Easter is about, she said the easter bunny. She had no idea it was a religious holiday or the significance of it.

When we were kids, we went to Church and after, went to grandma's house where grandpa had hidden eggs (I don't remember ever believing in the easter bunny). Our baskets (if we were lucky) were those green plastic baskets that strawberries come in. We'd use a fuzzy pipe cleaner tied to it to make the handle and filled it with grass (real or fake). If we didn't have a 'basket', we used a brown paper lunch bag that we decorated. I remember when I was about nine, my cousin got a 'real' store bought easter basket that her sister got her. It was a big deal. (that was in 1978) I admit, I was envious, I never got one EVER. We weren't deprived, it just wasn't so commercialized back then and the meaning of the holiday wasn't around the candy, toys and fun, but our parents focused on the real meaning of the holiday. (I'd love to know how many parents really take their kids to services regularly, let alone on religious holidays. I'm not sure what religions celebrate and which ones don't.)

For some of us, the "real" meaning of the Easter holiday is the celebration of the coming of Spring, with the attendant rebirth of plants and the next generation of animals. The connection of the celebration to Easter baskets and eggs is pretty obvious. I always got an Easter basket as a child, and still have my stuffed bunny that I got when I was three (a little worn and threadbare, but I will probably keep it till the day I die).

As a child, I remember going shopping with my mom for a new Easter ensemble (dress, shoes, little purse, etc). My siblings and I wore our new duds to Mass and would then go to my grandma's house to be with other relatives. The Easter baskets and egg hunt happened there & there was always delicious food.

I don't know that I thought a lot about the religious meanings of Easter then. The whole crucifiction and resurrection story is pretty scary and incomprehensible to a child, I think.

As an adult, like Ima, I am somewhat saddened to see how commercialized the holiday has become, that there is so much less focus on the implied meaning of the "holiday." I do not subscribe to the literal resurrection of Jesus but see the story of this aspect of his life as metaphor. Much as the arrival of Spring heralds the new growth of plants and the birth of animals (as TOS wrote), the Resurrection story is also one of the possibility of rebirth & renewal through the promise of Redemption. The Resurrection signals the New Covenant, eh?

It seems to me in the Old Testament, the guiding principle for social interaction was one of judgment and vengeance
--- the "eye for and eye" principle (was it Ghandi who said "an eye for an eye makes everyone blind?"). With the death & resurrection of Jesus, there was the promise of a new social order based not on vengeance but on forgiveness; one based on the possibility of reconciliation.

I believe this message is especially relevant to this forum. The very fact we are all associated with Stepfamilies suggests we face, in one way or another, painful breaches in relationships. All of us are coping with our own wounds, the wounds of people we love and care for, or the wounds of people who are significant to those we love.

The possibility of redemption, the promise of forgiveness and reconciliation seems central to healing the emotional wounds resulting from divorce and other breaches of our social contracts with one another.

With this in mind, I wish the profound blessings of Easter for us all.

lovely post, wry.

Thank you, sylvia. I hope you and yours had a joyous day.

Posted by kkny (My Page) on Sat, Mar 22, 08 at 9:58

"My x and I try to squeeze in multiple holiday vacations"

That is strange...on another post a while back you complained about stepmoms taking vacations??? And you said that you don't take vacations much........

So which post is true?

My poor wording, I meant holiday celebrations.

Well easter has come and gone. Of course, the kids didn't phone here. I was expecting my Dh to phone them but i didn't press the matter. I think he is still angry and disappointed. He told me they'll get the baskets when they come down 2 weeks from now but no egg hunt. He said they missed out on that part and asked me not to do it for them. I said ok. I'm not going to argue. Lately i noticed any present we give to SD she tosses to the side with no thanks. That was Valentines. Well that was the last gift she would see from me personally. I told my dh we will buy things together and only one or two things. The gold earrings i bought her with her dad was also said to be fake and were tossed in the car. I found them. Now my DH wants to buy her a ring. LOL! why? So she can call that fake. Well. i'm not going to give money for that gift. He will just have to do it on his own. until she begins showing some appreciates i'm not doing anything anymore. Sorry. bUt i'm not a doormatt! Let her s**T on her mom! Like she does anyway.

What the crap... if any of my kids bio or step threw down any thing I gave them with a no thanks or that is fake or any other such nonsense ... they would find out very very quickly what they have that they should be grateful for ... as in they would have nothing left in their rooms to worry about... and then see if they appreciated what they had.

Well last night my DH phoned to wish them a happy Easter. He had to explain to his son what happen cause he was obviously left out of the loop. SD had the attitude of 'whatever'. He told her next time his weekends are his weekends. Its not fair. She turned around and said ' its our decision to come to see you'
Her decision!!! lol...putting kids in such power is soooo dangerous. ANyways..he said. ok if its your decision then you will accept full responsibility of not seeing me whent he time comes and dont cry wolf after a while saying i dont love u. I do love u and i want to see you but since youve made your choice, then stand by it and you will be the one missing out. I didn't make the decision not to see you from now on. You r making the decsions..right? Now let me speak to my DS.
Of course his son was happy to come down alone next time and was happy to be left alone from his sis.
Its awful. But in a way i'm glad she is starting to keep her distance. If she is bring hate and anomosity in our house, i rather she keep it at her mom. I'm sick and tired now of ANyone being negative. I've dropped several friends in the last few months and if SD is like this being of her teen years then stay away and be happy with what you have with your mom.
My husband and i discussed that if seh stayed away for more than half a year we will pull all furniture and bed out. give it totally to SS. ANd when he begins not coming at all. After a while we will retake the room.