Hi neighbors. Today is Easter Sunday! Don't worry though, there is still time for coffee between sunrise and the egg hunts.

Does your family color the eggs before Easter morning or do that as part of the day's activities? There are some neat egg coloring kits out these days that top our old food coloring, wire-dipper days.

My granddaughter Alyssa likes stickers and won't eat boiled eggs, so Jennifer plans on using colored plastic eggs filled with little treats and letting Alyssa cover them with stickers. That way she can keep redecorating them for days.

In the past we always had lots of ideas for decorating. The basic "tie-died" egg with food coloring and crayons or wax pen markings were the first. Then someone came up with circles of colored paper to dress up the eggs.

With the popularity of Mr. Potatohead, we got the idea of painting eyes and lips and gluing on cut out ears to the eggs. Bunny eggs with glued on ears and cotton ball tails were popular when the kids were little.

Of course, you had to have plenty of simply painted eggs for hiding. No frills here, nothing added but the painted shell. Because these eggs got lots of duty. Easter morning, well all day Easter and every morning thereafter till we ran out of the colored eggs, was hide the eggs day. My children never tired of that game.

With the invention of plastic eggs, the game could go on for weeks! Until the last one got broken or sacked up for next Easter and put away.

The last time I was in Iowa visiting I bought Alyssa a bright red metal basket with handles. Jenny mentioned it was a long time till Easter, but I knew little girls (and boys) need "totes" something to carry all their stuff in. Alyssa proved me right as she started immediately filling it with her littlest stuffed bear, a plastic horse, some odds and ends of playing cards garnered with great difficulty from the "good" decks by chewing off a corner or bending one in half. No longer useful to the adults, these cards were real treasures. In the mornings she would stick her sleeper in the basket to carry around all day.

I don't know why kids do this, probably some hunter-gatherer instinct, same reason women carry purses. It's practical. When you're still fine tuning your tactile skills, it's difficult to carry arms loads of "gotta haves" around all day. A little basket with handles is certainly a necessity.

I'm sure she'll be eager to go egg hunting with her basket, if Jenny can convince her to empty it of all the other stuff first.

One year when I was in high school, we had a big Easter get-together for my extended family. We lived in the country and near our house were two small creeks. One had a little bend with a small sandy area that was always shaded that could be reached by a pasture road.

Everyone brought a dozen eggs, a fried chicken, a covered dish, and some ice. The men started a fire and Mom brought her huge canning pot. Everyone put in the eggs and water and left them to cook. Well, almost all the eggs. We kept some out for games.

Boy cousins, without any handy corn cobs for lobbing at each other and the girl cousins, resorted to throwing raw eggs. That ended quickly enough when an errant egg whacked Mom on the head.

Still, there were races and egg rolling contests and after they boiled, egg coloring contests. After everyone got full with the chicken dinner, the adults hid eggs while the older boy cousins tried to follow the uncles to discover the hiding places. The only rule was eggs left in plain sight were for the toddlers only and the bigger kids had to find the ones halfway up small trees or hidden in bushes or under pickup trucks.

It was a day well spent and well remembered by all. Good clean fun, except for the ones trying to wash off raw egg goo that is. The best part of the day, of course, was the fact that everyone was together having fun, renewing family ties.

Renewal, and family, is what spring and Easter are really all about.

Until the next time friends remember; colored eggs, candied chicks, and chocolate rabbits are all just symbols for rebirth and fresh starts. These symbols remind us we are all part of some thing larger than ourselves whether you see that as a religious affiliation, the cosmos or your extended family.