Happy Easter!

Happy (belated) Easter!

This was one of those picture perfect years where Easter fell late in April and we awoke to birds chirping and it was already 60 degrees by 8am, making the task of stashing plastic eggs around the yard much more tolerable.  Nice, even, when you're already in a pleasant mood and you see two overly excited boys smiling up at you.  Or down, as it were, since they woke me at 6:30am begging for breakfast. 

Yes, you can have chocolate.  You can have a basket full of crap gifts even though it hasn't been long since Christmas and I've spent most of that time dreaming of when you'd be able to go outside and give me ten minutes of peace.  You can eat monkey bread for breakfast and we'll pretend it's healthy.  I'll overlook that argument over how to divide the baseball cards.  Just keep smiling today...  I have a lot of cooking and cleaning to do.

Before the actual egg hunt could take place, the boys dug into their baskets.

There were some new wiffle balls for batting practice, chocolate crosses from Joel's Mom, fancy multicolored crayons, light-up bouncy balls, baseball cards and a voice changer toy that I had hidden a bit too well at Christmas time and rediscovered when I rolled away the "tomb" of duffle bags I'd used to disguise the gifts.

(Unfortunately that Easter miracle is a very noisy one that I wish had maybe stayed hidden, but it makes them happy and that was the whole point.)  Once they were dressed, buckets in hand, they ran out to see how well the "Easter Buddy" (Graham's festive invention only slightly more logical than the Holiday Armadillo) had hidden the eggs.

There were eggs on the baseball field...

Eggs on the firetruck...

Eggs in the big playset...

And the bonus tower...

And pretty much anywhere else the Easter Buddy could think to put them without climbing. 

The Easter Buddy is not quite as agile these days as she used to be.  Oh, um, HE.  Yeah, as he used to be.

Afterward, exhausted from running but fueled by candy, we headed in to count the spoils.  We'd divvied up a bag of jelly beans into the eggs as well as some robin's egg candy that was meticulously organized by color, and then knocked onto the floor for the dog to eat.  A few Cadbury eggs (a perennial favorite) were stashed away for later, and I got to work preparing for the big Easter lunch we'd have with my whole family and cramming toys into nooks and crannies to be discovered next Easter.

I was too busy to take any photos of the meal, but we did manage to grab a few shots of the family for tradition's sake.  This might even be the last "nice" photo we take before becoming a family of five, so I will try to cherish it and not dwell on the fact that my big pregnant stomach looks less like it's holding a baby, and more like I consumed the entire ham.

I hope your Easter was as sunny, candy-filled and nice as ours.  And if you have any tips on how to make my four year-old smile for photos, I'm all ears!  And belly...