Our older son didn't make it home for Easter this year. He spent the holiday in Cleveland, where he lives, with his girlfriend and her family.

And we ate our Easter dinner on Saturday instead of Sunday, as my daughter had to work Sunday and my other son wanted to get back to college in time to write a paper that was due the next day.

And instead of leaving sweets in the children's baskets, the Easter bunny brought the kids gas cards. With the increasing price of gasoline and all their comings and goings, gas cards just made more sense than chocolate bunnies.

We still dyed Easter eggs, though, because, as my daughter says, "That's one tradition I'm never giving up."

With three almost-grown children — they're 18, 23 and 27 now — many of our family traditions, are, as I like to say, "evolving."

Maintaining those traditions has been the focus of some attention lately, as my sister, who lives in Illinois, and I try to plan our families' biennial fishing trip to Rice Lake in Ontario, Canada.

With my sisters' children closely matching the ages of my children, our two families have vacationed at Rice Lake since the kids were first born. (Actually, the tradition began with my husband's parents, who started going there when my husband was 7 years old.)

Our Rice Lake vacations have always been magical interludes in our families' lives, where the cousins reconnect easily and freely under the brilliant blue Ontario sky.

And Rice Lake stories abound at our family gatherings, too. Like the time the kids rode one of their old bikes off the dock, retrieved it from the bottom of the lake, and rode it off again. Or their discovery of "diaper fishing," when they wear life jackets upside down around their bottoms and fish while floating in the lake. (They actually catch fish this way.) Or the time my son, Luke, threw his cousin, Andrew, overboard because Andrew failed to land Luke's big walleye with a landing net.

"It makes a better story this way," we always tell Luke, who still shakes his head in dismay whenever he's reminded of the fish that got away.

But, as my sister and I plan this year's vacation, we are stymied by our families' evolving lives. Her oldest is in medical school now, so his rotations may prevent him from joining us at the lake. And Andrew, who failed to land the big fish, has landed a job in sales with some office equipment company after he graduates from college in May, so his vacationing with us seems unlikely. And their youngest son is scheduled to take his college chemistry final the week we planned our vacation.

"I'm just so disappointed that none of the kids may be able to go," my sister says in one of our frequent phone conversations. "Can you have a family vacation if your family isn't there?" she wonders.

Traditions evolve, I remind her, something we tell each other often as our children embark on lives of their own.

Linda K. Schmitmeyer is a freelance writer living in Middlesex Township. Her e-mail address is lks260@zoominternet.net.