Happy Easter Everyone!

Get ready for a long haul, folks...this post is officially 97 pictures long! But then again, Easter is one of my favorite holidays, so what did you expect?   :D

Last week we got ready by dying Easter eggs with the Bowlings. Too much fun!

Watching the color pellets bubble up in the vinegar. 

Once Evie figured out what was going on she spent the rest of the project saying, "Egg in CUP!" over and over. 

If you put TWO in the cup, then they get funny lines and you can make patterns on them. 

Jack's faces were cracking me up all afternoon....

I'm telling you, dying eggs is INTENSE. 

Yesterday, we headed over to an Easter egg hunt at the local church a bunch of Mommies from playgroup belong to. Luckily, it's just a few blocks away, so we were able to walk. 

Scoping the field before the hunt begins. She seriously had a list in her head of which eggs she could see, and a plan of sequence to get them ALL fast!

Someone's Grandma brought a real live bunny and was kind enough to let everyone give a pat. 

There were so many kids there that we were split up into groups by age and what do you know, Rebecca and Caiden ended up in different groups! I was not quite sure how I was going to juggle this, but luckily the Mom in charge of Rebecca's group is a very nice Mommy from playgroup Rebecca knows and I trust, so off she went on her own! They staggered the hunts, so I was able to get pictures from both without running around like crazy.   :)

Participating in storytime before the hunt. 

And GO! Go ahead, Caiden! Um, honey? You can get them now...  Go Caiden, GO!

There he goes!   :)

He got quite a respectable haul. I was just slow with the camera. Dodging deer poop tends to put a crimp in your picture-taking speed.    :P

And off to Rebecca's hunt! It was adorable, because Caiden had already had his hunt. They both agreed on their own that it wouldn't be "right" for Caiden to find eggs on Rebecca's hunt. So instead he ran around the field pointing to them and hollering for her, and SHE scooped them up. That's fair, right??

Kid moves like a speed demon. 

We combined both their eggs into one basket. It was a LOT!

Post-hunting snack of cupcake and juice box. Yum!

Sorting through the loot. 

Getting face painted. 

Bunnies are green, RIGHT?

Rebecca's turn!

"Mommy, I picked these flowers for you. Because I love you. And they smell pretty, and you look pretty. So you should be together."
This little man melts my heart. 

Butterfly! You can't see in the picture, but her whole cheek is covered with sparkles. I always laugh at Mommies who start their kids on modeling super young. But then I look at a picture like this....

Digging in after we got home from the hunt. 

And then it was Easter morning!!!  Rebecca has been working herself into more and more of a frenzy for at least a week and a half in anticipation. She came sprinting into my room at 2:00 this morning shrieking that he CAME! It was MORNING! Get UP!!!! I think between the hours of 2:00 and 5:00 the kids logged a total of *maybe* 40 extra minutes of sleep. Generally in 2 minute increments before waking up to holler at me, "Is it morning NOW?!?!?!?!?"

FINALLY, Mommy gets out of bed. It was not yet 7:00. 

Bath squirters. He got a crocodile one. Crocodiles are COOL.

Sorry for the blurriness of this morning's photos. They were moving in hyper-speed. And the more sugar they ingested, the faster they moved.   :P

Egg-shaped gum.

I'm eating SUGAR, Mommy! In the MORNING!

New matchbox car. You can never have too many matchbox cars.

Time to hunt the eggs!

Hey! There's TREATS in these eggs!!!

That silly bunny even put some in the bathroom. We all had to stop and have a good laugh about that one! 

Yes, I have three times as many pictures of Caiden as Rebecca. He moves incrementally slower. :P 

Digging through the new loot. 

That blur is Rebecca....

There's a dinosaur in that egg. I loved his stunned face. 

And thus starts the trading. "Caiden. If you give ME the purple-backed dinosaur, I'll give YOU the green-backed dinosaur. How do you feel about orange cars? Because I do like orange, you know. Oh, yeah. Um, I have this green car here..."

We missed some eggs! Back to the hunt...

Peeling an egg for tasting. 

Believe it or not, they've never tasted hard-boiled eggs before.

Yum!

Though shalt not covet thy sister's Easter basket.

My favorite picture of the morning. 

I'm in love with the tiny little ways you see them growing up. For example, she actually gets her food in her mouth these days. Very rarely is she COVERED in food mess, like just a few months ago.  

The aftermath. Not bad at ALL!