Dreaming of France -- Easter Chocolate

Thank you for joining this weekly meme. Grab a copy of the photo above and link back to An Accidental Blog. Share with the rest of us your passion for France. Did you read a good book set in France? See a movie? Take a photo in France? Have an adventure? Eat a fabulous meal or even just a pastry? Or if you're in France now, go ahead and lord it over the rest of us. We can take it.

As we move toward Easter, I thought back to our weeks in France before Easter last year.
In the United States, we see a lot of Easter eggs and bunnies, but in France, the animal choices are wider.
Fish are big for Easter. Maybe it has to do with the fish as the symbol of Christianity.

But they also branch out into other animals, like horses.

And this cartoon rooster is quite a stretch, but I'm sure anyone would be glad to find this in your Easter basket.

And here's a cute kitty too.

No matter the shape of the animal, the chocolate is surely phenomenal. 

Hope you find some delicious chocolate in your Easter basket. 

Easter Askew

I knew this was going to be a strange Easter.
Spencer is away at college and Tucker left for a school trip to France. But I still didn't anticipate how off kilter things would be until Grace started throwing up Saturday evening.
She was really sick all evening and finally fell asleep.
Earl and I felt compelled to cancel our plans with his sister and family since we didn't want to spread the stomach virus to anyone else.
So this morning, I wandered the grocery aisles, wondering what I could fix for someone who has been recently ill, and two people who might come down with the same virus.
Grace slept and slept. I asked Earl to fix her Easter basket and hide it while I went to the grocery store.
We didn't go to church, again not wanting to spread the virus.
Earl and I were at loose ends as we waited for Grace to wake up. For the first time in 21 years, we didn't have kids looking throughout the house for their Easter baskets.
Grace's basket had candy, which I knew she wouldn't want to eat after being sick all night, and a copy of the DVD Les Miserables.
"If Grace would wake up, we could watch Les Miserables," I told Earl.

Here's a photo from our first Easter with Grace.
Love those floral print dresses and big glasses.

When she emerged around 11, she wandered into a chair at the dining room table where Earl and I were both on our laptops.
"Hurry up and find your Easter basket so we can watch Les Miserables," Earl said to Grace.
I turned my head and stared at him. Grace looked confused.
"I can't believe you  just spoiled the surprised," I said.
He looked a little sheepish but shrugged it off.
Grace wandered in the living room until she found her basket hidden under a blanket. She set it on the table and we all looked at it expectantly. Was the DVD hiding behind the chocolate bunny? Nope. We hadn't even put it in the basket.
I went to the closet and grabbed the movie from its hiding place.
So after our subdued meal, we spent the afternoon watching Les Miserables. It was just as wonderful as Sim at Chapter 1 - Take 1 predicted, and as moving as Grace told me.
I hope your Easter was a little more traditional than ours.

Easter with Teenagers

I remember when they were little and the excitement built as we moved toward Easter. We'd color eggs and I'd plan the jump ropes and slinkies that I'd hide in their Easter baskets so they wouldn't get overloaded on chocolate. Sigh...
I mailed Grace an Easter box last week and I was left home with 15 and 17-year-old boys. Would they even want Easter baskets? They would never turn down candy.
"Are you still going to hide Easter baskets?" Tucker asked in the week before Easter. His eyes looked hopeful.
"Well...not me, but the Easter bunny will," I told him.
We talked about it the night before and decided the boys needed to get up around 8:30 so they could find their Easter baskets then get ready for church.
Tucker got up and took a shower. A shower? Before Easter baskets? See, what kind of excitement is that?
Spencer finally got up about 10 til 9 and stumbled around until he found his basket then collapsed on the couch.

Tucker "didn't feel well" which curiously is how he feels most Sundays when we insist he accompany us to church. Easter was no different. He was angling to stay home even before he began looking for his basket.
This is one of those "if looks could kill" given by a teenager and caught on camera. It practically makes me a wildlife photographer -- catching the native species in its natural, aggravated state.
After mass, we went to my sister-in-law's house to play with baby Caroline who was dressed in a floaty Easter dress but who had not tasted chocolate that day. Ah. The innocence.
The only problem was that I took the picture with my phone and she kept tilting her head around to see the picture before I had finished taking it.
After a good meal, the boys interacted with their aunts, uncles and older married cousins. They carried on farily decent teenage conversations with adults and were in much better spirits when we returned home.
Hope your Easter was joyous, or at least you didn't have surly teens.