Weekend update.

[rivka]

Such a good, albeit extremely tiring, day.

We had a great visit to the Air and Space Museum hangar at Dulles Airport. It's essentially just an unbelievably massive hall crammed full of planes, with a few display cases of smaller artifacts thrown in to make it look more like a museum. (Variation: one wing consists of a massive hall crammed full of spacecraft.) I was chasing Alex, so I didn't get much of a chance to look reflectively at things, but, I mean: they have a Concorde. They have a kamikaze plane - essentially just a warhead with a chair and a steering wheel on top. They have the prototype space shuttle Enterprise. They have the mobile quarantine unit that appears in that famous picture of Nixon greeting the Apollo astronauts. They have the Gemini VII capsule - one of several capsules on display. I look at those tiny things, and my mind simply cannot encompass the idea of climbing into one and letting them strap it to a rocket and shoot it into space. Flying in something like the space shuttle seems so much more... sane.

We spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out at bosssio's house. For those who have been wondering whether she is as cool and interesting in person as she is online: yes. We have so much to talk about - I look forward to someday having the opportunity to hang out and have a long discussion that isn't interrupted every five minutes by the needs of a toddler. Her husband Andy seems to be very cool, as well. (Don't worry, Andy. I will never, ever disclose the Usenet thing.)

Alex held up to the long day, strange surroundings, and disrupted routine remarkably well. I am so grateful to have a toddler who is pleasant to take places.

---

E-mail from my mother this evening, asking if Alex was having an egg hunt and an Easter basket. Honestly, it hadn't even crossed my mind. We mark Easter at our church (and I went to the Good Friday/Yom Hashoah service), and I was sort of half-heartedly planning to dress Alex for church in something a little fancier than usual. (The 40-degree weather has defeated me on that one.) But the Pagan/spring/fertility/bunny/Peeps aspect of Easter isn't anything I feel connected to. It's nothing I feel excited about sharing with Alex. I'm not opposed to it - I figure that in a year or two she'll hear about dyeing eggs and Easter baskets and will want to try it out, and so we will. But I don't ever remember thinking, "I can't wait to have a little kid to hide eggs for!"

Not so for the rest of my family, apparently. I just got pictures from my sister Debbie, showing her 16-month-old daughter stained to the wrist in orange dye and holding up an egg in triumph. And my mother tells me that my little sister colored eggs and made an Easter basket for her four-month-old. I certainly remember doing the whole Easter thing as a child, and pulling out all the stops - we always had this monstrosity of a bunny-shaped cake, for example, and even now, in 2007, my mother has made one to share with those of the family who are gathering tomorrow. Apparently, for everyone else I was raised with, the Easter Bunny took. I wonder why not for me?

Comments

[ckd]

I love the Udvar-Hazy Center.

Did you get a chance to go up the observation tower?

[rivka.livejournal.com]

There was a long line, and with three toddlers in our group we decided not to chance it. We got some great views of planes landing from the cafe, though.

[ckd]

That's quite understandable. I'm glad you managed to do some plane-watching anyway. (IIRC, when we visited the cafe wasn't actually finished, so they had a corner of the hangar roped off as a temporary food area; I'm assuming the real cafe is running now.)

[wcg.livejournal.com]

I have yet to get out to Dulles for the annex. I look forward to hearing all about it.

Um, I guess I get chocolate out of this

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

As a good half-Jew, I have little (approaching zero) connection to this holiday. When people say "have a nice Easter!", I'm almost at a loss for words (through no fault of theirs), and barely remember to smile in acknowledgement.

But as a kid, we had Easter baskets and chocolate eggs and bunnies and dyed eggs..... I have no problem with that part.

This year, we've been invited to an Easter Egg hunt. As parents, we are asked to supply some plastic eggs w/ good stuff inside. And she needs a basket for the hunt..... So I did some Easter shopping yesterday. Elena has her basket now, with some chocolate and jellybeans in it, and she's very excited about "eggies" (one of her favorite words right now, for no reason). I don't think she realizes any of it is edible.

[telerib.livejournal.com]

We weren't big into the egg hunt thing, either, but boy did we do egg dyeing. Partly, I think, because we had a then-childless, Jewish friend of the family who loved to come over and do artsy goy holiday stuff - pumpkins at Halloween, eggs at Easter. So it was kind of an event.

And of course, going to a Catholic school, there was the "sell chocolate bunnies for Jesus" Easter fundraiser, so we always ended up with a bunny. The chocolatier was a local business and the bunnies were pretty good, actually. Mom and Dad kept it sane - one medium bunny per kid, with one or two additional small chocolates and a handful of jelly beans.

We often went to Grandpa's in the country for Easter, and one year Mom hid the chocolate bunnies in the glove compartment. After seven hours of being that close to the heating vents, the bunnies had reformed into the shape of their plastic bags. Swear to God, my parents apologized for the "roadkill bunnies," and my sister and I, little heathens, thought it was hysterical.

[selki.livejournal.com]

We weren't big into the egg hunt thing, either, but boy did we do egg dyeing.

Same here. The smell of white vinegar (used with the dye tablets) brings that right back to me. Holidays were fun for art expressiveness. We (my family and my cousins' families) would bring the eggs together for judging at my grandmother's after church, with some categories made up on the spot each year.

[redbird]

There is one chocolate egg sitting on my breakfast plate right now, along with a bar of dark chocolate. And more holiday-style chocolates for each of my hosts, whose holiday this is, more or less.

Chocolate bunnies may well be for the kids, though I have doubts when someone presents an incredibly ornamented one to a three-year-old, but the egg-dyeing stuff seems to be for the people doing the coloring (who may include kids), rather than for those receiving the eggs.

The only time I ever did an Easter egg hunt was, in a modified way, at college, where the dining hall staff would stash colored hard-boiled eggs all over the dining hall on Easter. And that was less hunting than, say, reaching for a box of cereal and finding an egg lurking behind it.

[bosssio.livejournal.com]

and back atcha Rivka - we had a fantastic time! 'course, we were also exhausted afterwards, but that good kind of exhausted.

As you might be able to tell, Andy doesn't always warm up to new people (its the geek introvert thing), but he REALLY liked y'all. He mentioned looking forward to hanging out again soon.

And Alex is amazing - so sweet and clever. She and the boys seemed to really get along well!

RE: easter - yeah, we did half hearted easter chocolate in my family. We did more when me and my brother were little, but my parents lost interest early. By the time I was in middle school, Easter was just another day.

We only have easter chocolate for the boys b/c the respective grandparents supplied basket material for them. I didn't face going to Church today.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Geek introverts are totally our kind of people. Maybe he could sense that? ;-)

She and the boys seemed to really get along well!

I was amazed that she was willing to go off and play in another room with the boys, out of our sight. She's usually much more reserved than that. And I was so relieved that she shared her markers so well with Liam - remember how it was when you were at our house a few months ago, and she just followed the boys around taking toys out of their hands?

It certainly makes me feel more comfortable about the fact that we're sending her to nursery school next month. And boy, think of how much fun the three of them will have charging around SUUSI together.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

When I was a child, we didn't dye eggs (we didn't really like eating them), but we always got some chocolate delivered by the Easter bunny. When I left home, I decided that I was going to celebrate Easter as a private religious holiday, not visit my parents, and not attempt to reproduce the chocolate ritual either. And I never missed any of it. Many many years later, I joined a family of non-Christians who loved celebrating their secular seasonal rituals, and who looked forward to sharing them with me, particularly because I belonged to the religious preference in which many of their customs had roots. So I've been giving and receiving Easter chocolate and jelly beans ever since.

Also, since returning from the USA where they weren't readily available, I pig out on hot cross buns.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

We had an LJ party at Minicon on Saturday and I looked over the balcony and said "the hotel guys are setting up for something." Eileen said "Easter brunch." Oh.