When I was a girl, Easter was a holiday full of traditions for my family. We always went to church to celebrate our Risen Savior. Afterward, we joined up with family for a special lunch, where there was always one of my grandmother’s famous cakes. Everyone wore their Sunday best, the girls were decked out in Laura Ashley, and there were lots and lots of white shoes.

And then there were the baby ducks – the baby ducks that for a few Easters in a row, somewhere in the middle of my formative years, my mother gave to my brother and I for Easter.

This is what I remember about our Easter ducks:

1) Being surprised with a baby duck was the most fun thing ever in my young girl’s eyes. My best Easter memories include little, yellow ducks running wild through the grass of our front yard, squealing their heads off.

2) Sadly, the ducks often did not survive very long. My mother’s idea of a duck pen was to stick some crappy kind of 12 inch high fencing – the kind you see around garden beds – in a corner of our yard and hope for the best when it came to predators. Unfortunately, the predators usually won. In the mornings, we would go outside to check on the ducks and it was a common occurrence for one to have disappeared in the night. Poor little ducks.

3) But the ducks that did survive, and we did have some of those too, were set free in a pond near our house. That was always the fun culmination, climax, and finale of our annual duck-keeping experiment.

For years, I have been waiting, pining, and biding my time until I could give my kids ducks for Easter. I was ready to start years ago, when Lilla was a baby, but Jay wisely recommended we wait. So, I waited. And waited and waited and waited and thought only a few dozen times For God’s sake, when are we ever going to get the ducks?

Until it was finally clear a few months ago that this was the year to get the ducks. We felt both girls were old enough to handle them, love them, and even help care for them; as opposed to them stepping on them, crushing them, or squeezing them to death, which would be no good. Obviously. We don’t want any squished or squashed ducks around here.

The ducks did not arrive until late Easter afternoon. To build anticipation throughout the day, Jay told Lilla a surprise was coming, and that it started with a “D.” She guessed every possible answer she could think up, until he finally said her surprise was, “D for dad. You get me for Easter! Isn’t that awesome?”

She did not find that quite as humorous as he did.

But when the ducks did finally arrive, the girls were beside themselves. We immediately set them loose in the yard, and discovered that they huddle together at all times, only travel in a pack, and will even eat out of our hands. The girls followed them around, sat and watched them, and smiled for the entire rest of the day.

Lilla also came up with their names – Teeny, Big, Butter, and Bob.

Yep, that’s right. I have a duck named Bob at my house.

Happy Easter friends!