The elephant in the room…

It’s been a looooong time since my last post. A long, strange time.

I’ve almost written so many posts in that time – there are a lot of eggs to talk about after all. But somehow I couldn’t do it, not without first writing about the impact of COVID-19 and the global pandemic that has made it feel like 2020 never quite happened. And it’s been so hard to get into the right headspace to write about such an overwhelming eggsperience, while keeping this blog positive!

But I have to address that ol’ elephant in the room, before I can write more posts, so here goes…

Easter 2020 was like no other for us. The whole of Australia went into a 6 week lockdown, as the world tried to come to grips with a global pandemic.

All those wonderful Easter traditions of ours involve people, and lots of them!

We gather en masse for Hot Cross Buns on Good Friday, and again on Easter Sunday for the Grand Egg-painting Eggstravaganza. My favourite day of the year… And 2020 was going to be even better because it was also my birthday. What could be better than to spend my birthday painting and eating chocolate with all my favourite people?

But no. That’s not how 2020 worked.

Instead, we spent Easter in isolation.

Still, we are an inventive lot, and weren’t going to let a little ‘ol pandemic slow us down!

My Dad still cooked a mass of Hot Cross Buns and blew a pile of eggs for painting. He and my Mum then played socially-distant Easter bunny, delivering goodies to the family.

I painted a giant paper egg to put on the window, and put a toy bunny in the garden, part of a rainbow trail and a teddy bear hunt that some clever people on social media started to give help give isolated kids some special Easter magic.

We bought each of our kids a leg of pork to roast, even the son in Canada, and ate them together over video call.

We ‘went’ to Mass online, broadcast from the crypt in the Cathedral.

And I painted an iso-egg, of course…

For me lockdown was not so bad – I got to play Rapunzel with my husband/Prince in my tower with me. And instead of roses hiding my tower, I got to include the crazy pumpkin vine that took over my garden.

Definitely a fun way to acknowledge Easter 2020.

When the family finally got together again I found I was not alone, in my isolation-themed, pandemic-related egg. Not surprising really!