Jackson and I dyed Easter eggs on Good Friday. We also kept busy making M&M/frosting/pretzel flowers. Well, I made flowers, J ate M&M's. It was a good partnership. We needed the pretty, bright colored M&M's for the "petals" but not the brown ones. J was free to consume as many of those as he wanted. Our eggs turned out great and he was really into coloring them this year. We had great weather and took the eggs and dye onto the porch for coloring. We had a few splashes (when eggs are dropped into a cup of dye, it tends slosh onto the table). We had a few cracked eggs. And we learned that vinegar not only smells bad, it tastes bad too (I swear this child tastes EVERYTHING!).
We spent Saturday morning at a kids event held at a local church. There were crafts, a bouncy house, egg hunts and even lunch! J hung out with one of his buddies from daycare and declared on the way home that "I'm tired. That wore me out." So, we napped! Hooray! Nap time was followed up with church and pizza dinner.
He just loves Miss Maddie!
But Sunday was the highlight of the weekend for me. Our plans were changing continually for the days leading up to Easter. Ultimately, we decided to take a laid back approach to the day. J rose early (as usual) excited to see if the Easter Bunny had come. He found a couple eggs before spying his basket. The Easter Bunny had been inspired by something he read. It said that a good gift for a child consists of: something they want, something they need, something they wear and something to read. Based on this, J's basket held a Hiro train (from his favorite Thomas video), a new frisbee (to replace our old one that broke), a short and t-shirt set and some books to help learn sight words. But, Easter Bunny could have saved a bunch of money and just bought the train. J was ELATED with Hiro. He played with that train all day, slept with it that night and took it to daycare the next day. Even when he was hunting the rest of his eggs, his mind is still on Hiro:
All smiles posing with Hiro.
After the eggs were found (all 18 - no one was free to go until they were all located. No stinky eggs for us!), we let J pick our activites for the morning. He chose playing at the park followed by throwing rocks into the Mississippi. We slid, climbed and swang. We skipped stones and even got to see a train go by while we were down by the river. Mostly though, we ran around and laughed and were silly:
Also, notice his dad doing nothing to discourage him :)
After rock tossing and explaining to J why he couldn't go swimming about 50 times, we returned home for lunch. We had chicken nuggets and mac and cheese - I may have dropped the ball a little on Easter dinner! But, that was what J wanted, so that is what we had. The rest of the day was spent taking a nap (bonus - two in one weekend!), playing outside and playing games.
It was definitely a break from tradition for us this year, but it was one of the best Easters I can remember having. We slowed down. We played. We laughed A LOT. We enjoyed the gorgeous day we were given and I felt like this might have been one of the few Easters that we really did right. It is fun to have egg hunts and Easter baskets. To see family and friends and spend time together. And we did those things. But Easter day was more about just being together enjoying the life we can have because Jesus died on the cross for us and forgave our sins. I think that is more the point than peeps and jelly beans (although I do love me some peeps!).
Happy Easter Everyone!!!!
such a lovely day! :] happy easter!
ReplyDeleteThanks Kate! Hope yours was good as well!
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