Easter has brought all sorts of scenes to Drummond Ranch through the years! There have been church mornings and big family meals, hot cross buns and chocolate bunnies, giant hams and paper plates, money-filled eggs and now, since baby Sofia joined the crew, stuffed bunnies. (A lot of stuffed bunnies. 😂) Some Easters have had a little more bustle and some have had a little more lump in the throat, but they all seem to end the same way: everybody fed, everybody worn smooth out, and Ree with a camera roll full of moments she’s glad she didn’t miss.
Long before her own kids were racing around in church clothes and hunting eggs in the yard, Ree had an Easter morning of her own that she still remembers clear as day. She was six years old, wearing a white dress with light blue trim, and Betsy was a baby in a white eyelet bonnet. Ree remembers the whole thing right down to the hollow chocolate bunny head she had secretly eaten for breakfast, which is a pretty excellent detail to hang onto all these years later. (Chocolate can have that effect on children.)
As the years went on and the Drummond kids got older, the Easter memories changed right along with them! Some years started out with Ladd hauling Ree off to the pasture while the rest of the day was still waking up. Other years were more about who was home for the weekend, who had drifted in by Saturday, and who was helping fill eggs at the kitchen table. There was usually a meal to make, a few dozen pictures to take, and at least one part of the day that went a little off script. And that’s exactly why the old Easter photos are so fun to look back on! You can see the family changing, but you can also see the same little holiday taking shape again and again.
The egg hunt, of course, is one tradition that never seems to go anywhere. Ladd has treated the church Easter egg hunt like a permanent assignment for years, so the Saturday before Easter usually means plastic eggs everywhere and a whole lot of filling! Back in 2022, the family got through what Ree described as six hundred eggs, and the candy crew started pulling out every piece of banana Laffy Taffy they found because, as they put it, no little kid wants that in an Easter egg. 😂 Later that night, Ladd stuffed all the banana taffy into one giant gold egg for his own family to hunt the next day, which feels very on brand for our favorite cowboy.
That same Easter also brought brunch at Ree’s father-in-law’s house, where Chuck had proudly cooked a 30 pound ham himself. The only issue was getting it back out of the oven—which turned into enough of a production that Ree is still laughing about it. (Luckily they had a college football player on hand to help out.)
Easter 2023 looked different in a lot of ways. It was the first one after Chuck passed away, and Ree wrote about missing Chuck and Nan while still being grateful that the rest of their wacky crew could gather at Chuck and Nan’s house the way they always had. They skipped the usual ham and sides and wound up eating biscuits and gravy on paper plates instead, which Ree joked might have been the reason she looked so happy in the photos.
There were girls photos and cousins photos and spring sunshine on the deck, plus Mauricio arm wrestling in bunny ears, because even a tender Easter at the Drummonds still had Mauricio arm wrestling in bunny ears! Ree summed up their dynamic pretty perfectly that year: “All we ever do as a family is fight, wrestle, compete, and eat.”
By 2024, the house was full again, because an empty nest never really stays empty for long! The kids were home, Tim’s family was there, and before the weekend had even really gotten underway, Ree, Alex, and Paige had already turned a pretty sunset into a whole photo-taking operation, with each of them taking a picture of the other taking a picture. That Easter also had church, family photos, spring ball boys back home for the weekend, the usual money-filled egg hunt, and one more little miracle at the very end when the boys cleaned every last dish in the kitchen.
Then came 2025 and Sofia’s first Easter on the ranch, which pretty much changed the whole weekend in the sweetest way. Suddenly there were stuffed bunnies everywhere, people taking turns scooping up the baby, and a lot less easing into things than Ree may have intended. Alex, Mauricio, and Sofia came in early, which meant more time for everybody to pass her around, squeeze her little wrists and cheeks, and decide all over again how much she looked like baby Alex.
Paige was still out working cattle and popping in whenever she could, because cows don’t quite recognize holidays. Easter morning still meant church in the same little church the kids had always gone to, only now there was a baby a couple rows up stealing the show. Lunch turned into biscuits and gravy after the family gave up on the more ambitious plan, and the rest of the day had all the usual ingredients: an egg hunt, people wandering in and out of the kitchen and living room, and Tim eventually nodding off with bunny ears over his face. As first Easters go, Sofia’s had quite a bit going for it!
That’s the thing about looking back at the Drummonds’ Easter photos through the years. The kids get taller, then they get married, then they show up with babies of their own. The menu shifts from ham to biscuits and gravy and back again. Some years have more noise, some have more pause, and some have both. But no matter what, there’s always church, family, a yard full of eggs, somebody making everybody laugh, and Ree catching the little things that end up meaning a lot later on—whether it’s a sunset outside the office window, a giant egg full of banana taffy, a church pew full of kids who never stop growing, or a bunny blanket in a baby’s tiny hands.
Happy Easter, indeed!
