Easter

A couple weeks before Easter our family enjoyed an egg hunt at our friend's, the Maneys, house.  It was perfect because our ward does a spiritual activity instead of a candy egg hunt (the kids go from room to room and learn about the last week of Christ's life and his Resurrection).  Between the church activity and the Maney's I feel like my girls got the best of both worlds (and I got a delicious brunch at each venue). 

Andrew's sister, Carrie, and her family were in town for Easter (only our second time sharing the holiday with family since we've had kids).  It was a lot of fun.  Carrie brought our girls some cute new baskets (made by her).  The girls really liked them, though there was some struggle over who got the green basket since Ellie and Lizzie both wanted it.

Andrew and I have different ideas about what are appropriate Easter basket fillers.  Basically he thinks some candy-filled eggs are sufficient whereas I like to add a small toy or two and some other seasonal items that I feel I might have to purchase anyway such as swimsuits, pajamas, shoes, hair bows, and such.  Andrew keeps reminding me that they are "not Christmas baskets."

Lizzie's loot: geyser tube (tube and mentos to drop in soda), small Lego set, p.j. bottoms, skirt, t-shirt, chocolate duck, egg with $5 inside.

Lainey's loot: frilly skirt (technically from Nana several months ago, but I hid it and re-gifted it), chocolate lamb, flip flops, pair of panties, nesting doll, egg with 5 Chuck E. Cheese tokens inside.

Ellie's loot: summer shorts, chocolate chicken, bug house (a leftover party favor from Lainey's 4th birthday party--pretty much just a space filler that she broke that morning), chocolate chicken, pair of panties, nesting doll, egg with 5 Chuck E. Cheese tokens inside, and another egg with three dimes.

I still think those are pretty reasonable baskets.  Of course I think that I kept the Christmas loot pretty reasonable and Drew thinks the kids got too much.

The night before Ellie agreed to use the yellow basket, but Easter morning she cried and screamed and carried on and tried to yank the green one away from Liz.

Eventually we were able to distract Ellie with her nesting doll.  She became completely absorbed with it and refused to look through the rest of her basket or search for eggs (indecently the only other time we have put on our own egg hunt for our kids was when we did Easter with Drew's brother, Dan).

Carrie, has a great system of designating an egg color for each kid for the egg hunt so that there are no worries about whether or not everyone is getting a fair amount of eggs.  I loved it and plan to do it every year.  Our only problem this year was that with eight kids it was hard to get enough colors.  We ended up with three shades of green.  Oh, and also, Liz felt that Aunt Carrie filled her kid's eggs with better candy than I did.

The other kids found Ellie's eggs for her, but she was too consumed with her nesting doll to be bothered with candy so her sisters and I ate about half of hers.

During Andrew's pancake breakfast the kids had "Egg Wars" with the hard boiled eggs Aunt Carrie helped them dye the day before (something else Andrew and I aren't good about doing on an annual basis).  For the war they tapped the ends of their eggs together.  Whichever egg cracked first was the loser.  Liz did pretty well.  She reasoned that her eggs were stronger because she left them in the dye longer.

 And while everyone ate, Gabrielle still played with her beloved dolls .  .  .

After breakfast we took Carrie's family downtown to visit some of monuments, then on to church where Andrew was able to bless a baby in Russian for one of the families he home teaches.  In all a pretty cool day.

Pictures from Carrie & Wayne: