Easter Fun

Last Saturday we headed out in the cold to the country club for the annual Easter egg hunt. Despite this being almost the latest possible date for Easter, it still was chilly! After Drew staying up super late the night before (see previous post), I was worried he'd be in a terrible, crabby mood. Then I heard him get up at 6:30 a.m., while I was in feeding Jake, and I worried a little more. However, he was in a pretty good mood. It helped that we didn't have to stand around a lot before the egg hunt.

Here are the boys waiting for the announcer to say go.

And they were off!

The kids were separated into 2 groups- 5 and under and 6 to 8. So Zach had a pretty good advantage, seeing as how he's just 6 weeks from turning 6.

I was a little worried Zach would end up with tons more eggs than Drew, but they were pretty close. Drew just zipped around grabbing eggs and had a lot of fun.

Afterward, we went inside for the pancake breakfast and to check out the loot. It's funny, Drew had told me the day before that he really wanted to get Smarties at this egg hunt, and I said maybe he would and maybe he wouldn't, not knowing what would be in the eggs. Well, he basically got ALL Smarties! So he was pretty happy!

Zach got one of the 5 special eggs out there. It had a note in it to go to the front desk. When he got there, he was rewarded with a $10 Toys R Us gift card. He was very excited about that, and said that he would get $10 of his own money out of his bank at home so that Drew could get something from Toys R Us, too. So sweet.

Mike got the "pleasure" of going to Toys R Us with the boys, and Zach used his gift card to get a Star Wars action figure- Jango Fett. Zach still gets confused about whether he got Jango or Boba Fett (or Janga and Bobo, as he often says). If you don't know, Jango is the dad, and Boba is the kid, although Boba is actually a clone of Jango, and in the later Star Wars movies, Jango is dead and Boba is older. Anyway, we've had to answer the question, "Is this Jango or Boba?" about a million times.

At this time of year, I try to avoid mall Easter bunnies. Santa is one thing, but a giant bunny that walks on 2 legs? I just can't even try to sell that to my kids. I don't know what I want them to picture when they think of an Easter bunny, because a little bunny hopping around, hiding eggs isn't realistic either, but I guess I like that idea better than those scary things at the mall. But, we couldn't escape the Easter bunny at the pancake breakfast after the egg hunt. We sat by our friends BJ, Susan, their kids, and some of their other family members, and poor Anna, who is 4, was terrified of the giant bunny. But Zach asked if he could get his picture taken with the bunny before we left. I couldn't say no to that. I wasn't sure how Drew would feel, but he was still in a great mood, so he was into it! He had kind of a funny smile when he first stood in front of the bunny, but that picture had a shadow on it.

I've mentioned before that our church is huge, so I dread holiday services there. It's tough because they're such great services, but I just cannot stand the crowd and the parking lot! The one nice thing is that there are many options for services. For Easter there were 3 services Saturday evening, and 3 on Sunday morning. So for the last few years we've gone to the Easter service on Saturday evening. It's still busy, but it feels less busy than trying to do it all in the morning, in addition to an egg hunt and everything else. Plus, Mike's mom often ushers at church and saves us seats, which is a huge help! So we parked across the street at the bank, like we've done the last few years, so that we can avoid the crazy parking lot, because if there's one thing that really gets me stressed, it's sitting in a parking lot, attempting to leave some place, at dinner time, with 3 hungry little kids in the back. Just the thought of it stresses me out.

Anyway, the church service was good, the kids were good, and the message by Pastor Mike was great, as usual. You can listen to the sermon here, if you'd like. The church is huge because Pastor Mike is such a dynamic speaker, and he definitely keeps it real, if you will. Jake woke up right at the end of church, and we had Mike's mom snap a quick picture with Mike's phone. The lighting wasn't great, but it's the first family photo since Christmas, so I'll take it. You can see we ended up with no special Easter outfits this year- just wore stuff we had in our closets.

Saturday night I got the Easter baskets ready and we hid some eggs for Zach and Drew. Originally the green-ribboned basket was Zach's. A couple of years ago I made the blue-ribboned one for Drew, and last week I made the orange-ribboned one for Jake. However, the morning of the Easter egg hunt at the club, Drew said he wanted the orange one. I didn't think Jake would care, so I said that was fine. Then Zach said he wanted the blue one. So Jake ends up with the green one. I wonder if it will still be that way next year, or in 5 years.

Sunday morning the boys were excited to check out their baskets and hunt for eggs. Here's Drew saying, "That's the rattle of money!" It actually was the rattle of jelly beans, though.

Zach was pretty quick at finding his eggs. It's fun to hide his as he gets earlier, because we can find harder spots to make it more challenging. I have fond memories of egg hunts, and I feel like my parents, especially my dad, enjoyed hiding the eggs for my sisters and me.

Drew wanted to open every egg as he found them, and I had to convince him to just wait and find all 10 eggs first, then open them all.

Later I had lots of work to do for the day's later events (frosting sugar cookies and preparing a salad), so Mike entertained the boys with one of the new books the Easter bunny brought.

After Jake's morning nap, we headed over to Grandma Cynthia and Grandpa Kevin's house for a big Easter lunch and some more egg hunting. We had a great time, but only took this one picture.

The rest of the day involved Mike doing some yard work, Zach playing Star Wars for a couple of hours with his cousin Cam in Colorado via Skype (such a great thing for those boys!), Drew napping, me making the potatoes for our evening get-together, and Jake napping (but only while I was holding him, of course). Once everybody was up from naps, we headed over to get together with our church small group and some other people. There were probably at least 20 people there, so it was a large group. We knew about half of them. The boys had a great time playing, and Mike and I enjoyed the socializing, but by the end of the night, we were exhausted. It had been a very busy holiday!