We had such a good time dying eggs yesterday (we celebrated a day early). While I had bought three different egg dying kits (I loved the marbled ones as a child and the new tie dye ones looked neat), we stuck with the traditional tablet in vinegar. I had remembered to boil the eggs the day before (Easter takes even more forethought than Christmas--and by next year we'll actually have to be sneaky about it all and hide things!) to let them cool overnight. With smocks on and paper everywhere on the table, DD and DS each got a set of cups with pink, yellow, and blue, plus a dipper which they ignored, and got to "painting" eggs. And of course they did it totally differently. DD liked to soak her eggs in a single color until she achieved a rich saturation; rarely did she even mix to make a solid orange or green. Her eggs glowed like jewels. DS, on the other hand, moved eggs from cup to cup before it could even get totally wet. His eggs came out these wonderful amalgams of color--pink with yellow and orange a tinge of blue and purple--rather like a muted sunset.
After dying eggs, and then cleaning up the downstairs of strewn toys, we set up all of our goodies on the porch: our empty baskets, the carton of dyed eggs, 4 carrots (one from each of us), and the cards the kids had made for the Easter Bunny. DS brought his drums and sang a "happy Easter" song. DD organized everything and danced along. And then, having read Gommie's bunny books, we were happily off to bed.
Baskets Full of Easter Joy
It will surprise no one in my family that I was up first. Eventually, we all made it downstairs (DD actually slept in until almost 8! But then they'd excitedly chatted until almost 9:30!) We went out to the porch, though DD noticed eggs in the house immediately, and set upon our filled baskets. DS noticed right away that the bunny had eaten the carrots. They loved the bags full of marshmallows--chocolate for DS and colored bunnies for DD--and tore into those pretty quickly, ignoring new pajamas, books, sugar eggs, and a big egg of plastic animals (though they eventually found those and began to play). DP had her favorites, Peeps, and I had mine, mini Cadbury eggs, plus previously mentioned spices from Penzey's! And a huge sugar scene egg, which I've always really liked. But mainly they ate and shared marshmallows while we ate our own candy. There were lots of spontaneous "thank you, Easter Bunnys" and "Happy Easters" as we sat on the porch.
Fifteen marshamllows later, we headed back inside with new plastic buckets because carrying the tall wicker ones was impractical. They saw a note that the Easter Bunny had written on the chalkboard--"Happy Easter! Thank you for the carrots. From
Let the egg hunt begin! The plastic eggs, with little animals, were all over the house. DD was really good at finding eggs. And even when we gave DS a few hints, DD got there first. Okay, DP tells me that sounds like he didn't find any, but of course he did, even some of the hard ones. But since they shared all the little plastic animals, when they eventually cracked them open at the very end, it didn't matter. Later, when Goo, Gong, and Ma arrived, we did our dyed egg hunt outside: DD wouldn't keep the few cracked ones, but handed them to DS or Gong, and once she encouraged DS to climb into our planter to fetch an egg for her! And he did. We also played with our cascarones, or confetti eggs, which I remember from living in San Antonio--you could buy these hollowed eggs filled with paper confetti during Fiesta and crack them on people's heads. Lo, and behold, the eggs were available at the grocery store this year. And so I bought two cartons. At first, DD just carried the box around but then we convinced her to open it and hit Mama on the head. Colorful confetti and cracked egg shell rained everywhere. Then the rest of us were baptized, sans DS, and paper littered the grass. It was lots of fun.
Then it was pretty much eating for the rest of the day, plus sometime inside play. We made blueberry punch again and DS did his best to devour the entire bowl. Mercy, that boy loves blueberries. We also had cha siu bao (or steamed pork buns), don tot (or egg custards), plus a lunch of chicken and rice, with bat chay (kinda like Napa cabbage). We read some of our new Chinese books, with Ma and Gong, as well as sang some of our songs, like the panda bear song and the little cat song. Ma had brought some eggs that slowly hatched little bunnies in water and we watched those crack as the afternoon passed. We also made a block-zoo with a lake and mountain for our little animals. Otherwise, I napped the afternoon away while they played bunny hop inside and pirate ship outside, with DD apparently telling Gong to get out of her way because she was looking for animals not people!
Easter, Take Two
On Sunday, we headed to church for our big egg hunt. Before leaving we made cards for the nursery lady, our minister, and one of our church friends. DD put stickers on folded paper, colored them, and glued down cut-out paper eggs. Then DS showed up to help. And we made a card for Gommie and Pop. We passed our cards out at church, put our Easter Lily on the altar for the service, and headed to the nursery. Then it was egg hunt time (though, DD had noticed the eggs right away when we arrived and was ready to go right then). Each child could find 12 eggs and so we headed out into the sunshine--but, even though we saw the plastic eggs everywhere, the kiddos were picky about which eggs they picked up. Eventually, we got our quota and headed inside to eat the candy. Lots of chocolate candy. They both unwrapped every piece and put them into their new bunny baskets, which church had given them to keep. It's now hours after church and they're still carting around the baskets full of unwrapped chocolate candy. We've had ham dinner with mac and cheese, though my odd kiddos don't like mac and cheese and just ate the ham and some corn. Later today, after rest time, we're going outside to clean our rock wall and sprinkled our packets of seeds. We've already found our tulip sprouts and growing crocuses, so spring is obviously on it's way.
Happy Easter!
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