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Then she'd hide the eggs inside Gramma's house and in her backyard. After Easter brunch, all of us kids would go to Gramma's back yard and get ready to fill up our baskets with as many eggs as we could find. Meemaw used to overdo it with the eggs, though, and hide WAY more than she needed to. In fact, I'll bet you could go out in Gramma's backyard right now and STILL find enough to fill up a basket. Sometimes I'll find an egg at Gramma's in a cabinet

or stuffed between the couch cushions. A few weeks ago Gramma's toilet wasn't working, and Dad found a pink plastic egg in the water tank that had probably been bobbing around in there for YEARS. When Meemaw got older she wasn't as sharp as she used to be, and she started putting strange things in the plastic eggs for prizes. One year I found a green bean, a bottle cap, and a paper clip in my eggs. That was the same year Manny found dental floss in one of HIS.

And I can tell you from experience that a used tissue sounds EXACTLY the same as a five-dollar bill when it's inside a plastic egg. The last Easter egg hunt we had was the year Meemaw passed away. At her funeral, Mom realized Meemaw wasn't wearing her diamond wedding rings. Everybody was all in a panic because that ring had been in the family for three generations, and apparently it was worth a lot of money.

After the funeral the family went to the rest home where Meemaw and Peepaw lived and turned the place upside down, but they couldn't find the ring anywhere. It got pretty ugly after that. Great Aunt Beatrice accused her sister, Great Aunt Martha, of pocketing the ring for herself. Then Aunt Gretchen said Meemaw promised HER the ring, so if anybody found it, they needed to hand it over. And before you knew it, the whole family was at each others' throats. So that's how things ended the last time we all got

together, and it's probably the reason we haven't been in one place since. I think the whole ring situation really shook Mom up. She said she hopes NO ONE finds Meemaw's ring, because if someone DOES, it could break up the whole family. But if that means no more visits from Aunt Gretchen and her kids, I have to say I'm all for it. Sunday When it comes to holidays, I'm more of a Christmas guy than an Easter guy.

On Christmas, the second you get home from church, you can just totally unwind. But on Easter you have to stay in your church clothes the whole day, or at least you do in MY family. Today we went straight from church to Gramma's house, and my tie was ALREADY starting to drive me crazy. I was nervous everyone was just gonna pick right back up where they left off after Meemaw's funeral, but when we got to Gramma's everyone seemed to