Easter time!

Easter is in 2 days, on April 4th. Guess what else is April 4th? My birthday (27th! EEK!). I usually don't care about my birthday but on the rare occasion that it lands on Easter I like to tell everyone about it. It has happened twice before. It happened when I was 16 in 1999 and when I was really young, probably 5. I looked it up and it will also happen in 2021 when I will turn 38! So it looks like it is a pattern that repeats every 11 years.

In honor of it being April 2, I have to share this photo. . .

That is my parents holding my cousin Kara. The date on the photo is April 2, 1983. Mother looks pretty fresh for someone who is about to blow! (haha she wasn't really about to blow. . .I came several weeks early!) I love the maternity shirt! That is one area of fashion that I believe has improved over the years! I looked it up and Easter was on April 3rd that year. I like the 4th better because when you write April 4th it is "4-4"!
I think I had guaranteed some Easter related tales when I wrote about my Easter decorating a few weekends ago. My favorite Easter story took place sometime when I was in elementary school (probably 4th or 5th grade.) When we moved to the farm in 1991 our neighbors across the road had kittens and we took four of them to live with us. There were two girls and two boys. They were born in the fall and the girls didn't survive the winter due to typical farm cat perils but the two boys, Rascal and Buttons, did. That spring we took the "brothers" to be neutered at the vet in Portland. Soon, they became fat and lazy and we loved them! Rascal was "mine" and Buttons belonged to Pete, although they were our family pets. My dad pretended not to like them but he did! They became buddies with whatever dog we had and were oblivious to other cats. They hung out with mothers and thier kittens and rarely left the yard. They were constantly lounging around and cuddling together and always found the warmest and softest spot.
One spring, a few days before Easter, we realized we hadn't seen Buttons for a few days. He was probably about 3 or 4 years old at the time. My mom dismissed it and said he was fine and that outdoor cats could be on thier own for awhile. She said something along the lines of, "maybe the Easter Bunny has him and will bring him back on Easter." My cousins came for the weekend and we were awakened for sunrise church on Sunday morning. We looked at our baskets and then we went to the door. Guess who was out there? Buttons! It was so delightful. He was fine of course. It sounds outlandish that he happened to return that morning but I highly doubt my parents would have gone to the trouble of hiding a farm cat for several days to give us a magical Easter. I think the baskets of candy and scavenger hunts were sufficient!

I wish I had scanned better pictures of Rascal and Buttons because there are so many cute ones! This is the only one I have at the moment, however. Buttons is the one with more white. That fata$$ dog on the porch swing is our old retriever Penny who died in 2005. Rascal and Buttons lived quite long lives for farm cats (although the neutering, heat lamps, human food and daytime house access might have contributed to their longevity.) Buttons started getting weak when he was 9 and one day we never saw him again. I believe he died in peace somewhere in the woods around our house. Rascal lived until I was in law school (seriously!) and died in 2005 or 06 when he aquired some sort of cancer and got really weak. They were great pets to have! I think about them, especially Buttons, every year around Easter!