Easter 2013

Many schools seemed to have Spring Break already, but for our kids, it falls over Easter weekend. On Friday, the boys went up to Maga's house to dye some eggs. Maga had 15 dozen eggs ready! The boys had a blast and brought home a few dozen.

I made several batches of "nests" ... these are basically meringue cookies, but bigger and in nest shape, to be topped with a little "Peeps" bird sitting on some jelly beans. We never made it to the bird/jellybean stage, as they were eagerly consumed by me and the middle kids (Landon and Colton don't care for them).

Saturday was the Westra Easter party. I'm in charge of bringing the eggs for the hunt. I can't believe I didn't take a picture of the  laundry basketball full of eggs (although if you look at previous years, it probably didn't look very different). Often filling the eggs is a huge chore (mainly MATCHING up the halves) but I just had them out for the kids to fill over a few days and it gone done pretty quick and easy. I had some toys I'd picked up on clearance last year, which was a good thing, because on a last minute trip to Walmart ... they had NOTHING left (no Easter candy, toys, NOTHING). I had picked up some candy earlier, and had some stickers and balloons and we got all the eggs filled.

I brought deviled eggs, chex mix, and suggested to Landon that he set up a specialty drink bar. At New Years, Uncle Clay (on the Blackham side) had introduced the boys to "dirty diet coke" and other fun concoctions. Add some Torani syrups (which come in a wide variety of flavors) to soda and half&half. They were quite popular with the Westra side too.

Then it was time for the hunt. We loaded up the big kids to go hide the eggs, while Grandma gathered the little kids in for storytime while they waited. I thought this picture turned out really cute!

 The kids had fun finding eggs ... here's Colton with his catch.

Camden and Cooper put the stickers all over their faces.

This is becoming and Easter tradition too!

We had been worried about the weather ... just the week before there had been inches of snow and freezing temperatures. But today turned out lovely, perfect for an outdoor gathering!

Sunday (Easter morning) didn't turn out QUITE as expected ... all the Easter buckets were laid out on the couch the night before as usual. The Easter Bunny came and filled them up ... so why is everything on the kitchen counter instead of the usual spot on the couch?  Because SICK kids were on the couch, and other buckets were being put to use ... that will be another post.

Happy Easter!