Paque @ MindSay

 

Note:  The voices you'll hear in the background at first are me and my little brother Josh.  Eventually you'll hear another voice, a man saying, "Aw, I almost did it, yeah!"  That's my Pomen.  The way I was kneeling to film the spider, my butt was kinda sticking up in the air.  So when he said, "I almost did it", he means he almost snuck up behind me and popped me with the washrag he was carrying with him.  He ended up doing it anyway, but I had fair warning.  =P

 

 

 

As some of you may already know, my grandfather passed away in 2004.  I don't really care to talk about it at the moment, but let's just say it was an extremely difficult time for me and leave it at that. 

 

Anyway, while we were all eating lunch on Sunday, my Nanny leaned over to me and said, "Pa couldn't make it today, so he sent his truck in his place."  I looked over to where she was pointing, and sure enough, there was Pa's old truck.  I had forgotten that Uncle Danny drives it now.  I decided to take a picture of it, just because:

 

Here's a picture of Uncle Danny and Pomen:

 

And then Josh came along and Pomen made a sort of pose for the picture:

 

lol  I love the look on Josh's face in that one.  It's like, "What the hell are you doing taking a picture of me, huh?  You want a piece of me?"

 

*ahem*  Anyway, here is another picture of Josh, this time of him in mid-throw (even though it looks more like he's running) :

 

From left to right:  Nanny, Pomen, and Momma in one of her rare moments of smiling a real smile and not that damn plastic one she uses at work:
 

Then Daddy came back from fishing, and he placed one of his "live bait" on the table.  I'm not sure why it stayed so still while I took the picture, but I didn't ask any questions.  =P

 

And now for the moment you've all been waiting for.  (Or maybe not, I don't know.  It just sounded good.  lol)  It is now time for the pocking of the eggs.

 

First of all, that's not really how it's spelled.  It's a french word paque, but I'd just as soon spell it like it sounds.  Nobody really cares anyway, it's more of a spoken thing than something you write about.  Also, I didn't get nearly as many pictures of this as I did of the dying eggs thing.  But oh well.  I shall post what I have, and it shall do.

 

Anyway, when we pock eggs, what we do is we take the eggs we dyed the day before...    

 

...and we each get one to start off with. 

   

And now I shall describe the process, using this picture of Momma and Grandma as an example:
 

See how Grandma has her hand wrapped around the egg with one end pointing up?  And how Momma has her egg with one end pointing down?  Well, what Momma is doing is tapping one end of her egg on one end of Grandma's egg.  And what she's trying to do is crack Grandma's egg.  If she were to succeed, then Grandma would have to turn her egg over so Momma could try and crack the other side.  And if Momma's egg would crack instead, then she would have to turn hers over and try again to crack Grandma's egg.  Once somebody's egg is cracked on both ends, they can peel the shell and eat the egg.  Then they'd probably pick up another egg and try to pock with somebody else.  

 

Here's another picture, this time with Garrett and Grandma.  (Apparently Grandma is winning.)

 

Obviously, the end result is going to be the same no matter what:  The eggs will get eaten.  But the general object of the "game" is for your egg not to get cracked. 

 

Here are me and Garrett's eggs before (mine is the green one) :

 

And here is my egg after:

 

Apparently I lost.  =P

 

Daddy ended up being the "champion" because his egg didn't crack.  Here he is, holding up his winning egg and making a funny face: 

 

Here's Garrett, holding up his most recent discovery:
 

Josh, looking over his shoulder and making sure he didn't miss any:

 

And then everybody joined in to help find that one last egg:

 

After all was said and done, we all sat back down at the tables and chilled out.  While doing so, I caught sight of a blue jay about six feet away:

 

Then it flew into a nearby tree, and I took a few more pictures:

     

Thank heavens for the zoom feature on my camera.  =)

 

Well, that's all the easter vacation pictures I have.  Ironically enough, I'll be going on yet another camping trip this weekend, so I'll probably have more pictures to post when I come back.  :p

 

I hope you all enjoyed my vacation entries!!  :D

 

--Gretchen