Easter Fail

We woke up to find our Easter baskets this morning since we will be staying at a hotel in Dubuque tonight. The kids loved their baskets and were thrilled to find them early, but soon after eating a few pieces of candy Reese came up to me and asked, "Mommy, does the Easter bunny have to buy the things in our baskets? Not sure where she was going with this question, I answered that I didn't know, then asked, "Why?" She replied, My movie says WalMart on it. I immediately replied that the Easter bunny does not have elves like Santa, so he must have to buy some things and she seemed to buy that excuse. Now that I have a reader in the house, I am going to have to do a much better job of preparing for the holidays!

Easter 2011

My daughter woke me up at 6:30 am, ecstatic that the Easter bunny had come and left her a basketful of goodies. She dove right into her basket, eating as much candy as she could.

Aidan was equally excited to see his basket when he woke up a few minutes later.

The kids then got to try out their gifts from mom and dad. Reese got Just Dance 2 for the Wii and Aidan got a four wheeler:


They would have ridden that thing all day, but eventually we went in to get ready for the day. Here are my babies all dolled up!

We got in the car and drove to my uncle's for brunch with all of my aunts, uncles, cousins, and their kids. We only see some of these people once a year and it is always great to get together.
Before leaving to head back home, we got together to take a family picture. How long can it take to get 18 people together for a photo? Quite awhile! We asked my cousin to take a family photo with my siblings and all of our kids at our recent Easter brunch. She thought it would be funny to document the process of getting our whole group together:


Still gathering kids who were having too much fun to be bothered with photography!

The gang is all here, but we need to fill in the gaps.

Passing babies around! My god, our family multiplies like rabbits!

Looking pretty good, but why is my brother-in-law hiding in the back?

Finally, almost everyone is looking at the camera! My daughter is crying, Parker looks like she is chocking and my husband and I are too tall to be standing in the front, but we have proof that we were all toghether for Easter!

Though I knew the kids were tired and cranky, we tried for a photograph of just our family:

My daughter is still crying, my son looks like he is trying to look down my dress and my husband looks like he has been goosed! My husband did not understand why I wanted to even try taking a picture because he knew that it would not turn out. I said it is not about having a perfect picture, but actually to remember the moment! I will always remember that the kids had a great time running and playing with their cousins and were just worn out and overstimulated from the days activities.

After a quick nap in the car the kids were nice and refreshed for the remainder of the days activities. We had an egg hunt with their cousins from my husband's side of the family.



Then the kids played which allowed us a nice chance to visit with family. It was a wonderful and fun day with all of our family!

A new tradition

We have several traditions for Easter, including baskets full of goodies from the Easter bunny, brunch with my extended family and dinner with my husband's family. As a kid I remember dying eggs but we have never tried it with the kids. Finally, this year I decided that we needed to add egg dying to our Easter traditions.
Fortunately for me, the carton of eggs gave easy directions for boiling eggs! I told you the last time I did this I was a kid and we do not eat hard boiled eggs, egg salad or deviled eggs. After boiling the eggs, I set up all of the supplies from a kit we had purchased. I got Reese a pair of gloves to wear to prevent staining her hands with the dye. Then she picked the colors which I squeezed into the baggie with the egg. We then rubbed the dye into the egg. She really wanted to do it by herself, but I was afraid of the egg falling out of the baggie.

I then sat Aidan down to help me color the eggs. He picked colors as well as he could (repeating the color choices I gave him) and really enjoyed rubbing the color into the egg.

When we were finished we had nine beautifully tie-dyed eggs!

It was a lot of fun, but I think that next year we will try a different method to give the kids a little bit more freedom to do it by themselves.

Happy Easter!

It was a very busy day of finding our baskets from the Easter Bunny, going to Dubuque for Brunch with my family and then returning home for egg hunting and dinner with Randy's family. We would not change a thing though and are very happy to be able to share these moments with so many people that we love!