Our Hillbilly Easter

In an effort to catch up on the things we've been up to and our crazy weekend trips, here is a post about our Easter this year, complete with lots of pictures...and I do mean lots! The other weekends are still to come...

Though Easter this year (4.4.2010) was very nontraditional, we still managed to keep all of the important Easter traditions.  By nontraditional, I mean that minus TJ and my cousin, Jimmy, my mom's entire side of the family spent the weekend at the cabin: Joyce, the Baguleys (plus Wes), my cousin Andrea and her kids Alicia & AJ, and Mom, Dad, Matt, and Jamie.

There was no Easter Sunday church service and there were no Easter dresses, but we did have our own Easter celebration, complete with worship led by Wes on the guitar, reading the Easter story from the Bible, share time, and communion - compliments of Joyce (she made communion crackers and brought grape juice!).  It actually made for one of my favorite and most memorable Easters ever - to be able to celebrate Jesus' resurrection in such an intimate setting surrounded by those closest to us, knowing that we were not only family, but a family unified in Christ.  In other Easter traditions, we also had an Easter egg hunt for the kids and the Easter Bunny even managed to find Alicia and AJ all the way out in the middle of Country Bumpkin, USA! 

Here we are...on the road again! We pretty much know I-85 with our eyes closed. 

Sadie greeted us when we arrived - she was so excited, she kept jumping on both of us, running from door to door.

There she is..."The Roost"...heaven on earth for the Pridemore family men...

Dad's done a lot with the place, especially since it started out as a "pole barn"...it looks awesome.  It serves as the family gathering place these days.  The last two times we've been to Georgia, we've been to the cabin and haven't even made it home.

An awesome place to relax and just sit in rocking chairs on the front porch in the middle of the woods...

Ryan and I may have both grown up in the outskirts of Atlanta, but with my dad being from the mountains of West Virginia and Ryan's dad being from lower Alabama, there's definitely a little country bumpkin in both of us and this place will soothe the country soul.  It's nice to get away here where you don't see a car all weekend other than the ones parked in the yard, you can put your phone down and not pick it up all weekend and you don't have anywhere to go, so you might as well just relax and hang out.

Before everyone got there, Alicia and AJ got bored and resorted to reading their (identical) books and picking flowers for their mom, but once everyone got there, they wore themselves out trying to do everything.

We rode 4-wheelers...

I let Alicia drive the whole way back from the pond, several miles away.

...while Mom and Joyce rocked and corralled the dogs....

...and Sadie ruled "the Roost"...

 She's a spoiled "only dog" and didn't get along well with Carolina and Brody...and was bitter that we left her behind on the 4-wheeler outing...

This one of Mom and Joyce cracks me up.  Mom's laughing at something and Joyce is startled by something Brody did...

The boys...Dad, Ryan, and Matt...went hunting, of course.  Ryan shot his first turkey (that I posted about here) and Alicia and AJ learned all about hunting safety, ethics, and cleaning turkeys.

AJ kept some feathers as a souvenir.  He and Alicia tried to carry the turkey to weigh it and clean it, but at almost 20 lbs., Dad had to take over...

This next picture isn't for the weak-stomached, but Alicia and AJ watched Dad and Ryan clean the turkey like champs.  They kept inching closer and were fascinated with all of it's parts...the gizzard, the stomach, etc...

Matt was determined to get a turkey at this point.  The weekend before had been opening weekend for turkey season and Dad and TJ had gotten turkeys and now Ryan...he was the only one left.  Unfortunately, he came back empty handed after a hunt by himself, so Alicia and I went to pick him up.  Little Annie Oakley she is!

But the next morning...he got his turkey!

We spent some time at the pond fishing...

...and watching from the Rhino...

And this one cracks me up.  Tina, me, and Andrea just taking a girl cousin pic...while Ryan naps on the four-wheeler in the background!  Took me a while to even notice him back there.

And just because I think he's so cute... ;)

A few of us snuck back to the cabin to stuff Easter eggs for the egg hunt before Alicia and AJ came back from the pond.

I took this when he was driving the four-wheeler and wasn't looking...

We left Matt in our dust...

Mean Aunt Tina made "gag eggs" and filled hers with grass, rocks, and cereal...

Poor Alicia found all of Tina's eggs while AJ got the good ones.  Here's AJ finding a camo egg...those had money in them.

It was so fun spending Easter with the Baguleys.  I remember one Easter as a kid when Tina and I had stayed up so late (like we always did) that we heard the Easter Bunny in the kitchen.  We were giggling too loud (like we always did), so Joyce came and peeked in on us (like someone always did...usually it was my uncle Steve though) and we pretended to be asleep (like we always did!).  Ahh, good memories... :)

Then Alicia and AJ also got a lesson in gutting fish from my Uncle Steve, their "Pop"...

And we got some target practice in...

And that was our nontraditional Easter!

Only thing that made it short of perfect was the lack of TJ & Jimmy!