Easter: A Week-Long Extravaganza

When I was kid, Easter was pretty fun.  We'd color eggs; the Easter bunny would hide candy filled eggs around the house (if my dad did the hiding, we would be finding them all the way until summer).  We'd go to church, have a nice dinner and consider ourselves lucky.  There might even be a trip to the mall to see the Easter Bunny.  Now, Easter is an event.  There are community sponsored activities, school activities, friends-based fun, and of course, the home celebration.  I am certainly not complaining, I like a good holiday as much as much as the next guy and we took advantage of everything we could.

For us, Easter began last Saturday at the St. Mary's County sponsored egg hunt.  I took the kids last year while Thomas was deployed and it was nice to go as a complete family this year.  It was Luke's first big outing and Thomas and I were a bit nervous.  But, he essentially spent the whole time sleeping, waking up only to eat.  The kids had two big memories from last year: face painting and hoping to find the special egg during the hunt. This year, we got there shortly after the gates opened and it was already very crowded. Because face-painting was a priority, we decided to do that first.  There were about 10 kids in front of us and 3 people painting.  It ended up being about a 30 minute wait.  The painters were true professionals and their designs were impressive.  Kara had a dog face, Jack and Anna chose to have their arms done.  By the time we were done, the face painting line was out the door.  I imagine the wait at that point would be hours. However, the finished product was awesome!

We walked around a little and let the kids try their hands at tennis.  I don't think we'll be signing anyone up for lessons anytime soon.

From there, we took a snack break.  For some reason, ice cream from a truck always seems so much tastier.  As a funny side-note, I saw the doctor who delivered Luke, Luke's pediatrician, and my dentist.  We didn't see anyone else we knew.  Crazy that the 3 we did see were all medical professionals.  If only my PCM had been present, we would have had the quadfecta!

Luke woke up hungry, so Thomas fed him his very first bottle (which he didn't seem to mind) while I took the other three to look at the ambulance and other vehicles set up.

His salute needs work.

Finally, it was time for the Easter egg hunt.  The girls were in the same age-category and went first.  They were disappointed when neither one of them found the special egg (spoiler alert--neither did Jack).  They each found a good number of eggs and then it was Jack's turn.  Jack got a bit cheated.  The man was still giving instructions, when a few kids rushed the field.  The guy told them it wasn't time to go back, but instead, more kids ran out.  Jack, who followed the directions and waited, lost valuable time and collected about half the number of eggs as the girls.

Monday, we went to a play group with friends.  The kids had a great time at the park and Luke again slept the whole time.  We had a potluck lunch, followed by another Easter egg hunt. For some reason, I did not take any pictures.

Then, we had a lull in celebrating until the weekend.  Saturday, we took the kids to the park.  Then, we came home and made Rice Krispy Easter Eggs and colored eggs.

Finally, we made it to Easter. The Easter Bunny hid the eggs the kids colored and left them a note saying if they could find all of their eggs, a surprise would magically appear.  They were very excited and quickly got to work. The note also said that they couldn't help each other and if they saw someone else's egg, they had to leave it alone.  This was obviously very difficult for them, but somehow they managed.  Then, nothing happened. We tried closing our eyes and counting to ten, still nothing.  The kids decided that maybe the surprise had appeared outside (a brand new car!) or somewhere else in the house, so everyone took off to look.  Th ared!  We all ran upstairs and each kid had a basket on their bed.

Now, they are happily coloring and munching on treats while I write the blog and Thomas exercises. Tomorrow, we have our final Easter event--a trip to the White House Easter Egg Roll!  Stay tuned for even more pictures!