I don’t remember for sure who’s idea it was to begin with. My mother’s maybe. She is a creative thinker. But as my sister, my brother, and I became teenagers my mother searched for a way to keep the egg hunts interesting. Money works. But I think we’ve found something that is even cooler. And I’ve never heard of anyone else doing this!

I believe I was eighteen at my first water balloon egg hunt. Sound weird? I suppose it is….but you really shouldn’t knock it until you’ve tried it! My mother had plastic eggs hidden with one dollar bills (about 60-80 dollars worth) but in addition to that she had about two hundred water balloons hidden…with the eggs. The object is to find as many eggs as possible (duh!) and to bomb your opponents with water balloons all at the same time.

It really is the best fun. We’ve gotten to where the money is of little importance and the balloon war is the biggest factor. We have the hunt divided into sections now that my mother has five grandchildren (and soon will have six!). We have a hunt for the kids and one for the adults.

It’s really hard to say who has the most fun….the kids or the grown-ups.

It is definately a different kind of tradition. One I hope will be around for a long time in our family!

I love holidays! Easter is one of my favorites. I hope to post on Easter later this week….the wonderful Easter story. But for now I’ll share our eggs!

This is what you get when you stick your head out the backdoor and shout “Time to dye eggs!”

Yes….eight kids, four grown-ups, lots of hard boiled eggs and 15 cups of dye.

Here’s the result!

(These do not include the ones my two year old nephew would get out of the coloring cup and immediately stuff in his mouth…shell and all!)

Oh I believe there are angels among us.
Sent down to us from somewhere up above.
They come to you and me in our darkest hours.
To show us how to live, to teach us how to give.
To guide us with a light of love.

Mrs. Brenda is one of those people that often make you wonder if she really is an angel or not. I know her friendship has touched my life and the lives of my children in a most powerful way.

My daughter, Shiloh, was born when I was eighteen years old, on Christmas Break between my first and second semester of college. I was a single mother at the time and wasn’t sure what I was going to do for childcare. Mrs. Brenda, a member at the church I was attending, was just retiring from working at a bank.

She offered to babysit for me. I don’t know how long I actually tried to pay her. She wouldn’t hear of it. I sent a stuffed diaper bag to her house with my daughter every day. Every day the bag returned untouched….diapers, formula all still there.

Mrs. Brenda treated Shiloh, and later Landon, as her own grandchild (grandchildren). She would buy them well thought out gifts that suited their interests, seasonal clothing, shoes, toys for her yard as well as mine (slides, kiddie pools). My kids adored the ground she walked on.

She babysat for me for five years….until Shiloh started school and I got a job that put her house thirty minutes out of the way of my job.

My children still adore Mrs. Brenda. They ask to visit frequently. So every school holiday requires a visit to her house….where they play with their old toys, recieve the gifts she frequently gives them, and they fight over who is going to sit by her….

And Mrs. Brenda always remembers their birthdays, Christmas, and Easter gifts.

So yesterday, we spent the morning at Mrs. Brenda’s house. Mrs. Brenda had eggs hidden for a egg hunt, stuffed Easter basktets, a new DVD, and a trip to McDonald’s in the plans. We also played a bit in the yard. My kids had a blast and as we left were making plans for the next visit in a few weeks.

This woman has been a huge blessing in my life and the life of my kids. I thank God for having the opportuntiy to get to know her!

You know, I’ll always be a country girl. I have been my entire life. I grew up at the end of gravel roads…miles from the nearest “town”. And by town, I mean churches (well, this is the Bible Belt…we have a church for every third person!), school, a Piggly Wiggly, and a volunteer fire department.

I know all there is to know about honeysuckle, creeks, snapping turtles, tin roofs…

You’re talking to a girl who used to dress baby pigs up in baby doll clothes and play hide-and-seek in a corn field. I’ve tasted the honeysuckle and know that the tiny violets that grow in grass, wild onions, and seeds from pinecones are edible. Some of my earliest memories are from camping on creek banks and riding up and down the creek in my dad’s old green boat checking catfish lines.

My very earliest memory (my parents think I was about five months old) is of going to the creek to see some of my dad’s friends. They had caught the most enormous snapping turtle and had it tied to a stake on the creek bank. I remember my mother holding me tightly (she later confessed that the turtle made her nervous and she wanted to leave) and feeling afraid…but safe. This memory is completely in black and white and with no sound. Kinda weird, ya think?

When the song Boondocks came out by Little Big Town, I must say, I truly understood. It is the song of my life.

I feel no shame
I’m proud of where I came from
I was born and raised in the boondocks
One thing I know
No matter where I go
I keep my heart and soul in the boondocks

And I can feel
That muddy water running through my veins
And I can hear that lullaby of a midnight train
It sings to me and it sounds familiar

And I can taste
That honeysuckle and it’s still so sweet
When it grows wild
On the banks down at old camp creek
Yeah, and it calls to me like a warm wind blowing

It’s where I learned about living
It’s where I learned about love
It’s where I learned about working hard
and getting by with just enough

It’s where I learned about Jesus
And knowing where I stand
You can take it or leave it, this is me
This is who I am

Give me a tin roof
A front porch and a gravel road
And that’s home to me
It feels like home to me

I keep my heart and soul in the boondocks

You get a line, I’ll get a pole
We’ll go fishing in the crawfish hole
Five-card poker on a Saturday night
Church on Sunday morning

Only we were more likely to play Hearts or Rummy on Saturday night! Ohhh…but that midnight train. I remember!

Even when we moved closer to “town” when I was in second grade, we still lived in the country. We still lived at the end of a gravel road. And we were in walking distance of not one, but two creeks. I grew up playing in the woods surrounding our house, wading in the smaller creek behind our house (even been known to do that on the coldest of December days…), and hiking to the larger creek across the road in front of our house to swim. We would have rope swings and log bridges to jump from. (My parents still live here…)

In high school, I went through a period of being a bit ashamed of coming from a small town. And living in the country. It didn’t seem too terribly exciting. It seemed terribly glamorous to be able to say you were from New York City, LA, Chicago….or even Atlanta or Dallas….And words like redneck, hick and country bumpkin were never said with much admiration….

It seemed new students would come from all over and feel that they had been forced to live in the worst place in the world. Moving from a city to our small world must have been a shocker…(you can ask my husband about that! Raised in Tuscon and LA and then moving to Diamondhead, MS at the age of 16!) but I let it color my perspective of where I came from.

I must say that I’m way over that feeling now. I’ve been to many, many large cities. They are fun. They are exciting. But I will always be a county-girl at heart. My favorite places will be secluded places…with water and trees. I’ll always love a large yard, woods bursting with pine trees, a babbling, gurgling creek with their sandy bars lined with honeysuckle, gravel roads, barbed-wire fences, woodpiles, old barns, bullous vines (yummy)….

So, since I’ve moved to the city (Gulfport, MS…a small city by all standards but quite large enough for this country girl) and live by a busy four way stop where people love to drive through, squealing their breaks and blasting their radios at 2:00 in the morning (which I’ve finally gotten used to) I must admit, I’m not in such a bad situation.

You see…all these pictures were taken in my backyard.

There are not many places like this left in Gulfport. But fortunately, if I have to live in the city, God has seen fit to bless me with a place that still has a very open and country feel. Even if every plane flies right over my house before landing at the airport!