Easter 2018

This might be one of my most favorite Easter holidays to date.  I'm not sure because we certainly have had some memorable ones, looking back at the pictures through the years, but this time signified a year where every one of the kids was completely absorbed in the egg hunt.  James understood exactly what he was supposed to do (we have always had one child each year that wasn't quite ready for the game) and then I know that I'll blink and Samantha won't be that interested in it anymore.  So, I relished in the moment that morning and tried to capture some of the memories.

We gave Jimmy a head start but quickly figured out that he didn't really need any advantages.  He held his own just fine.

Sophia raced around like a busy little bunny and stopped for a nanosecond so that I could capture her excitement in a photo.

Sam was in charge of any of the eggs that he up high and she excelled at that.

Sophia shared a few of her eggs with Jimmy and he was more than happy to add them to his bucket.

After a few minutes, I found Jimmy at the table opening some of his eggs.

Ready to join Jimmy at the table to open their eggs.

The Easter Bunny did something different this year ... in lieu of candy and coins inside of the eggs, he chose to put puzzle pieces.  Sam figured out pretty quickly that the pieces needed to be put together to spell out a message.

Opening his eggs and adding the puzzle pieces to the collection.

There were 110 eggs in total that we hidden, each with one piece inside, throughout the house.

When it was all put together, it told each of the kids where to go to find their Easter Baskets.

And that is when I had to stop taking pictures for a moment ... the kids were off in different directions, running and squealing, and I just stopped to take it all in.

They brought their baskets back to the table in the Family Room and set to work opening them and showing off their goodies.

I'm pretty sure that Jimmy's favorite part was the candy and fruit snacks inside.  He kept pulling them out, one by one, and showing all of us.

Two of Jack's most prized items: his Batman hat and nerf gun.

My immediate family came over for a quick lunch (smoked turkey!) and then we headed down to the park for a COLD egg hunt -- it was 30 degrees and so windy.  The looks on my kids' faces while waiting for the festivities to begin pretty much sums it all up.  It was downright frigid.

There were over 1000 eggs scattered about ... more than the kids at the park could even gather.

On a mission.

Chapped cheeks and partially-filled bags:

Smiles for miles.

Coloring Easter Eggs

When the kids were younger (and we didn't have all four of them), we used to do a lot of holiday traditions at the kitchen counter -- carving pumpkins, decorating Christmas cookies, coloring Easter eggs, etc.  But as our family has grown, I've modified things and we now set up a table in the Family Room with a plastic tablecloth for those memory-makers.  We started doing this last Halloween and I can see us doing this for the next 15 years!

I put Steve to work preparing the solutions, while I got the kids set up at the table.  It's always nostalgic for me because the glasses that we use belong to the punch bowl that was my grandma's.  It was one of the many things that I asked for when she passed away.

Set up with trays and a disposable tablecloth, and a two-year old that couldn't sit still.  Bunny ears were optional.

Samantha, as the oldest, went first.

Jack was very gentle and put a lot of thought and planning into his eggs.

James, wow.  Steve supervised, but I will admit that I was about 99% sure that we had at least two eggs that cracked when he practically THREW them into the solution.

(Later, I didn't find any that were cracked.  It was an Easter miracle).

These holiday traditions are Sophia's 'love language."  She lives for things like this.

Towards the end, Jimmy was just beginning to understand the point of all of this.  He's also the one child enjoys hard-boiled eggs; the other kids don't really appreciate them yet.

Patiently waiting for the eggs to develop:

Partway through, the kids started getting more creative with their designs and mixing of colors.

The finished eggs -- bright and colorful with a patriotic one thrown in there too, courtesy of Steve.