Was everyone’s weekend as full and satisfying as ours?

We kicked off the weekend -long festivities with our friends’ annual easter party and egg hunt on Saturday.  This was Oona’s first year participating and she loved seeing all of the little colorful plastic eggs glistening all over the grass, waiting to be scooped into her basket (and she LOVED the “cAHndy” inside!).

When they first began hosting these parties Maddie was still fairly small, and now she has grown up enough that she and some of the other older kids are the ones setting out the eggs instead of collecting them.  Time flies.

It’s been a great time every year, and I think it just keeps getting better and better.  This year there was even more food to be had and a moon bounce was rented for the kids (and the “kids”, if you catch my drift) and great use was made of the beautiful new deck they put on the back of their house, complete with the much needed fire pit, since it was colder than we’d have liked all day.  The party kept going until well into the night, but we left before dinner since we still had to color our eggs so that the giant bunny could come and hide them.  I got the Paas Marbling kit this year, and though it didn’t work quite as well as we hoped, the eggs still looked pretty.  I don’t have a picture to share because my crappy camera can’t take a decent picture at night and I didn’t feel like searching for the photo lamps.  Either way the bunny still came (and the girls couldn’t believe they never heard the dog bark at him during the night) and hid the eggs.

Lots of delicious teeth-  rotting candy for all.  (I’m partial to stale Peeps myself).  Oona was occupied for a good while sorting through her little basket and picking out her favorite items.  Tops on her list are (you guessed it!) Reese’s peanut butter cups.  Can’t say I blame her.  She had them stuffed into her cheeks like a hamster, chocolate drool spilling down over her chin.

(She got a good tooth brushing afterwards.)

It was a nice lazy morning spent drinking coffee and listening to the girls sort their loot and do taste tests before we headed to my parents’ for dinner.  The girls wore the dresses I had originally wanted them to wear to the dance (the girls declared them unfit for a dressy dance and picked different ones).

We picked flowers and ate cheese and crackers waiting for my brother to get in.

The girls had some photo – worthy cute moments (right before Oona knocked Neve off the chair).

Then Caleb got in and we ate a lovely and intimate (small group this year – usually we have more relatives in for easter) ham dinner while making fun of his bed – hair.

The girls then were let loose on the outside world to work off their sugar and ham – fueled energy before the coming of school on Monday morning. Why the school system here does break the week before easter I’ll never know – it prevents being able to travel anywhere for the holiday.

Emily discovered that real tennis is considerably more difficult than Wii tennis.

Oona caused much anxiety with her full speed, face – first running style.

Mostly though it was nice just to watch the kids playing outside without a care in the world, as it should be.

Eventually the sun set and we had to head home to get bathed for school.  Oona’s been on a later sleep schedule with the break so it’s been hard adjusting for her and I.

Last night Paul took her to bed with him while I stayed up to trace out patterns and clean up a bit.  He closed the door to our room, claiming the girls were too noisy, and inadvertently shut the cats out.  Poor little Jasper was stuck away from his food and litter until I noticed the problem somewhere after midnight and let him in.  So when Paul went to do the taxes this morning and grabbed the cardboard box he was keeping the tax papers in it should not have surprised him that there was a gift of cat poop in it.  All over the W-2s.

Consider it Jasper’s contribution.