A boring Easter

So if there's one thing I absolutely miss about being in Illinois it's the huge get togethers my family always did. If it was a holiday of any sort, we got together, had a huge meal, just...was a family. You don't get that much these days, most families aren't really all that close, not near as close as my family is. So I called this evening to ask my mom about cooking the ham (I had a generally good idea of how to do it but wanted to make sure I remembered right), and of course she was at my aunt and uncle's house having a big cookout. All the hubub! My entire family (once they realized it was me) demanded to speak to me to say Happy Easter.

I miss that a lot.

Like. A Whole Lot.

Now that my grandfather is gone (he passed away the day after Thanksgiving this past year), much of my family is making plans to move. The bond that held them all there was my grandparents, and now many of my aunts and uncles are older, in their late 40's and mid 50's and they're tired of the cold and crap of IL, so they're all pretty much looking to move (me being a huge advocate of them moving here! lol). It saddens me to know that my family is all going their seperate ways, not because they don't want to be near eachother, but because they each have their own version of "paradise" that they're looking for.

What saddens me more is I'm not there to enjoy the last few big get togethers. My family was huge, my grandparents had 6 kids, and each of those kids (with the exception of my mother due to circumstances surrounding my father's accident) had an average of 3 to 4 kids. Now most of us that are my age (about....9 of us grandkids) have an average of 2 or 3, I'm the only one old enough to have kids that don't at this point. So you can imagine the size of those get togethers!

But, I'm currently awaiting my ham-goodness to get done cooking. I bought a smallish ham (I wasn't going to buy one at all), so that I could have left overs for lunch (ham sandwich anyone?!). So it'll be small, just myself and D, and we'll just have mashed potatoes and greenbeans and some stuffing (well he'll have the stuffing I probably won't) and call it a done deal.

Just another day.

Amber