WORLAND – Countless traditions have branched out the past few centuries to celebrate Easter and its meaning. Though the most popular include church services and egg hunts, a few families have also developed their own takes on the holiday.

Kathy Evans' personal childhood memories of the holiday included a few unique traditions. "My dad was a pastor, so I remember waking up bright and early and making our way up to the mountain for sunrise services. I would sit there and shiver. I remember slipping my feet into my brand new Easter shoes and being able to put on my new Easter dress that my mother sewed for me. We had four girls in the house, and she would sew one for each of us. It wouldn't just be on Easter, either. It'd be for Christmas, and the school year. As we got older, we were able to pick out our own fabrics for our dresses." Evans said. "I remember one dress was gray with pockets. It had a pink cummerbund. All three of my sisters and I matched. It had buttons on it and said 'cute as a button' on it. But that's when we were very little."

Other traditions included Cascarones, the Hispanic tradition of egg shells filled with confetti. Jenny Fabela remembers the tradition very well. "You make the Cascarones by cracking a small hole in the top of the egg, and draining all of the yolk out. Then you get to fill it with confetti and paint it. You let them sit for two days... You chase each other on Easter and get to crack the eggs on people's heads. If you get one with confetti in it cracked on your head, it's supposed to be considered good luck." Fabela said. "I was never too fond of getting it cracked on my head because I have so much hair," she laughed. "It's too hard to get all of it out."

"My nieces still do it, except they put glitter in their eggs as well. So when that's going on, I have them do it outside and I stay inside." Fabela laughed. "We always have a big family dinner, too. With ham, tamales, pork chili and beans. I used to do Easter baskets for my grandkids, but most of them are too old now. But I still do the egg hunts. I fill a couple plastic ones with money or candy, then hide a couple real ones as well."

Eula-Jene Willard recalls her church youth group having a sunrise breakfast, with a bonfire. "We went up to the gravel pit at the fairgrounds," Willard remembered. "We'd all bring what we wanted to cook for breakfast, whether it was bacon and eggs or something else. It was only for the high school age, but, if we had younger siblings, we were able to bring them. Both my brother and sister were in high school before me, so my younger brother and I got to attend a lot of them."

"We always smelt like smoke or bonfire afterwards, so we always had to hurry home so we could take a bath and get changed before the church service." This tradition died out within a few years.

Willard also remembers doing the town Easter egg hunt.

"This was back when this was all farm ground. Between the '30s and '40s. They would hide them in the hay field between hay stacks. Kids would run as fast as they could. We all would have to go through the hay stacks to find them, of course."

Willard carried the tradition with her when her own kids were growing up. "We would always be sure to count how many we had before we hid them, so we knew how many to look for. But I remember one year, one of the eggs never showed up! We looked everywhere that we had hid them, but it was never there."

South Side Principal Ken Dietz and family travel to see their extended family in Idaho. "My mom always does an egg hunt for the grandkids," Dietz explained. "We always do Easter baskets, go to church. Every week we have a family meeting, this week when we meet we're going to talk about the true meaning of Easter."

"Our traditions are a blend of both my wife and my family's traditions. My childhood memories and traditions remain the same as what we do now in Idaho," he said.

Worland Mayor Jim Gill said, "I have fond memories of coloring the eggs and looking forward to a great dinner."

He said this year the family will have a dinner together and give the family cooks a break as they are going out to eat.

"Our grandkids are getting old enough now that we don't have them to chase around and find the Easter bunny's eggs. We still enjoy them a whole bunch.

He added that when the grandchildren were younger, "We had a lot of fun with them, hiding them before they go out and look and then kind of coaching them where they might look. That's a family tradition like so many families in our community," Gill said.

"I wish all of our citizens of Worland a great Easter," he added.