This past Easter Sunday our two sons and their families joined us for the traditional ham dinner accompanied by scalloped potatoes, baked beans, homemade rolls and strawberry shortcake for dessert. You'd think after all the years and all the hams I would get a different menu request, but the food still gets rave reviews and of course, the price is always right at Mom's Diner.

While most of the ham--comatosed adults sprawled into wicker furniture on the back patio--the Grand Prix, the Triple Crown, the Main Event, the one reason children get out of bed and trudge to Grandma and Grandpa's house on Easter--the EASTER EGG HUNT was about to begin in the back yard.

Participants included five excited, noisy, already sugar--high grandchildren--two boys, three girls, under the age of 9--plus one lumbering bulldog named Gracie and Pitty Pat our French bulldog, the brains of the operation. Both canines stood by ready to snatch and gobble any and all dropped eggs, eggshells, candy and/or wrappers.

Grandpa's two assignments included sending each child onward and upward to hunt at scheduled time intervals according to age. The other was to point out eggs for the two youngest to find and plop into their baskets before they were all snatched up by the three older veteran egg hunters of Easters' past.

Grandma's assignment--besides cleaning, cooking, clearing, washing, boiling, decorating, hiding and cleaning again--was taking pictures. I am and have been the family photographer for as long as I can remember. This might explain why there are no pictures of Grandma for the past 40 years.

The orchestrated chaos of exuberant, energetic children flitting here, there and everywhere--searching for those precious, colored eggs-- lasted for a record 35 minutes! Sixty eggs hidden and 58 eggs recovered. Two eggs were recovered and eaten by the ever vigilant, ever-patient Gracie and Pitty Pat.

The children were then seated and arranged appropriately on the grass for picture taking and the bestowing of Easter baskets. The adults looked on, the dogs continued to circle, and Easter grass flew in every direction. Chocolate bunnies were unwrapped and devoured, entire rows of pastel Peeps lost their heads and tails, miniature candy bars dropped from quickly opened plastic eggs, Fun-Dip was licked and dipped and left behind on little red, green and purple tongues, and silver dollars were stashed into deep pockets.

As we watched these five happy children enjoying this beautiful Easter Day, Jaxson, the oldest at age nine, stopped and looked up from his basket. We watched as he scanned the yard in every direction. Next he looked at each of his cousins and sisters who were still sitting contentedly, sampling goodies from their baskets. Finally he looked at all of us adults, still seated on the patio, and asked in all sincerity, "Wouldn't it be nice to have an Easter egg hunt where you never run out of eggs to find?"

Now wouldn't that be ever so nice? May we never run out of Easter eggs to find nor the desire in our hearts to keep looking.

Cheryl Gillmore

Read more by CL Gillmore at www.clgillmore.com

Author's Bio: 

Award winning novelist and poet, C. L. Gillmore is a retired special education teacher. She holds a Bachelor of Education degree in both Elementary and Special Education with graduate endorsements in Early Childhood Education and Learning Disabilities. After more than 25 years in education she decided to pursue her passion for writing as a full time career.

“Writing has always been an important part of my life. My second grade teacher was a big influence,” Gillmore says. “She was instructive and encouraging and made me love putting my thoughts on paper.”

In the past two and half years, Gillmore wrote and published the social media based romance novel, Uncommon Bond, the first of a two-part series about Rose and Jake, who marvel at the kind of love that only comes along twice in a modern lifetime: the first time in person, the second via technology.

Uncommon Bond has been nominated for TWO 2012 Global eBook Awards: Best Romance Fiction Contemporary and Best eBook Trailer and was a finalist in the romance category for the 2012 National Indie Excellence Awards.

In addition, Gillmore wrote and published Of Roots, Shoes and Rhymes, a poetry book and audio CD. The collection of 28 poems covers her life experiences from pain in childhood through the true friendships of young adulthood to a career in service to the most special kinds of children. Some of the poetry in this collection also appears in the novel Uncommon Bond.

Of Roots Shoes and Rhymes won BOTH the Arizona Author’s Association 2011 Literary Award for published non-fiction and the poetry category in the National Indie Excellence Awards for 2012.

A transplant from Muscatine, Iowa, C. L. Gillmore resides in Surprise, Arizona with her husband, Mike. They have two married sons and five grandchildren who live nearby. They share their home with a French bulldog named Pitty Pat and an English bulldog named Gracie Belle.