On the evening of Easter Sunday, I told myself that I would blog about the day before the next Sunday rolled around. Obviously, I failed at that goal. Ugh. Now my goal is to crank this out before another Sunday passes us by! Edited to add: Oops, missed that deadline too. I've been typing this thing for days!
Katie Wynn woke up Easter morning to a visit from the Easter bunny. No, she had no idea what that was about. As I scrolled through Facebook later that day, I saw that the Easter bunny rivals Santa Claus at a lot of my friends' houses. Not so much the case at our house. Katie Wynn got a coupe car (I wanted to get her one anyway so this was a good excuse for it), an inflatable pool for this summer (a $5 score from Bargain Hunt that I'd already bought for her anyway), and 7 empty eggs. Yep, like the tomb, they were empty. She brought them home from her hunt at daycare and I immediately ate all the candy out of them before realizing I didn't really have anything to fill them back up with. She didn't seem to notice or care. :)
She loved the coupe car so much that she insisted on eating her breakfast in it.
I LOVE Easter Sunday...definitely my favorite Sunday of the year. But this year, I was stressed about how it would all work out. Matt and I were playing handbells during the service which meant we had to be at church early for a practice. Someone (my dad) would need to watch her during that and then she'd have to make it through a long (and crowded) church service, lunch, and an egg hunt before nap time. It really could've been a disastrous day with a cranky toddler, but it ended up being great! My dad managed to get her to go down for a mini nap before church which was a HUGE help. We just had to quickly get her dressed before heading back for the service.
There is one major rule after church on Easter Sunday: everyone has to pose for pictures in their Easter best before running off and changing clothes. My big, fat, pregnant self included.
It doesn't seem right that one person should be allowed to have so many chins. It's not fair for me to keep so many to myself when some people don't have one at all.
Cute, even though Katie Wynn has weird, comb-over bangs. Darn wind!
Katie Wynn is definitely to the point where she's not a fan of my camera. She doesn't want to look and she sure as heck doesn't want to smile! I absolutely love the pouty picture below on the left. Matt was just trying to coax that snack cup out of her hand but she didn't really wanna do that. He managed to get her laughing, though!
One of my favorites from the day. And you should be thankful that I cropped it the way I did...nothing about the position I'm in was flattering. :)
The flowers were my (brilliant, if I say so myself) idea to get rid of the snack cup. Added bonus: they made for such a pretty prop! My mom made her Easter dress so I tried hard to get some good pictures of it. I hate that I didn't get a close up of all the shadow-work embroidery she did. I have about 50 photos from this five minutes to choose from, so here are my favorite 6. So hard to narrow it down!
Just like last Easter, we invited the Thompson family to join us for lunch and the big egg hunt. They're practically family anyway. I don't think the twins, Anna Charlotte and Stuart, made it into any of my pictures last year since they were still so new and tiny and slept the afternoon away. This year, though, they're walking and talking and into all the fun!
I'm sure my niece and nephews dread seeing my camera out! :) Here are my oldest brother's (Nick's) kids. Jett is just days shy of turning 9 and Bren is 5.
And these two giggle worms belong to my other brother, Ben. Parker is 5 and Ramer is 2 and a half.
We tried really hard for a picture of all five of the grandkids, but my moody toddler wasn't really up for taking pictures with her cousins. The oldest four were about done with me and my smile requests, so I tried my old standby trick of having them scream as loud as they could. The thinking behind this is that as the screams die down, their faces fall into real smiles as they're laughing and that's the prime time to snap the pic. (Click here to see how this trick actually worked for our Christmas cards!) After going back through all of these outtakes, though, I realize that I should have told the 5-year-olds that they had to hold still while screaming, no moving out of position! Instead, I ended up with a lot of crazy pictures like the one below on the right.
This time they all stopped screaming and put their arms down at different times, so the picture below on the left is the best I could get. Matt had the brilliant idea to just hold Katie Wynn into the picture while he hid behind them. Uh huh. See how well that worked out? There's your Easter pic, Mom. :)
We lined up for a full family pic too, sans our parents since Dad seemed to be MIA. Poor Katie Wynn... #squished
We tried to do the scream trick again too. This time, in addition to telling the five-year-olds to stay still, I also failed to tell the photographer (ahem, Emily...) to keep snapping after the screams stopped. I don't think she got that memo so all I have are a bunch of screaming outtakes. To be fair, this is probably much more representative of all of us together though. Also, I so wish Nick (coral shirt) was on social media because I'd totally crop this to be his profile pic.
After that group photo, I just gave up. No more trying for posed pictures! With that out of the way, we could finally enjoy the awesome spread of food that (mostly) Mom had prepared. Oh my goodness, we had enough food for the whole neighborhood! The kids all ate quickly and ran outside to play, which left plenty of room for fatties like me to go back for more!
After lunch was cleaned up, it was time for the egg hunts! I think Mom had stuffed about a thousand eggs. At least that's what it looked like; I could be off by a few.
This year the first hunt was for the tiny kids - Katie Wynn and the twins. We hid their eggs on the screened in porch and, as expected, all three walked in, sat down in the middle of the floor, and played with the first eggs they got their hands on. Obviously they didn't know the game was to get as many into their baskets as possible. #amateurs
Thank goodness for the older kids who came in to "help" and get the show on the road. They did a great job of filling up the baskets while the babies (I can still call them that, right?) just sat and shook eggs. Katie Wynn did eventually put some in her basket herself thanks to some help from Mimi.
The BIG hunt was out in the front yard. Since this is the first time Ramer and Alice got to go with the bigger kids, we gave them a minute head start.
Then we unleashed the others and they were off!
The two pictures below totally crack me up. Bren's basket got too full midway through the hunt, so she poured her eggs out into a pile so she could keep going. Katie Wynn finally caught on to the point of this game and decided to capitalize on Bren's unsupervised pile-o-eggs. Ha! Look how innocent she looks. "Finders keepers," she says.
As the oldest, it's no surprise that Jett found the golden egg. Folding money for the win! Alice's method of counting her eggs was my favorite...open the egg, eat all the contents, and then move on to the next one. :)
After counting eggs, it was time for my very favorite part of the day...confetti eggs! If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know cascarones are a staple for our Easeter Sunday so that we can all have good luck. It doesn't hurt that they're also fun and colorful and really add to the celebration of the day!
And here are just a few more snapshots I took while we all hung out outside and enjoyed the beautiful weather.
Just as everyone was getting ready to load up their cars and head home, I yelled at Matt to run inside and get the dessert I made. Phew! Close call! I was gonna be really mad if everyone got away without eating the egg-shaped rice krispie treats I'd slaved over the night before. :)
With everyone properly sugared up, then we could head out for afternoon naps.
Once again, it was another perfect Easter Sunday. I really do think this is my favorite holiday. Christ is risen! Christ is risen, indeed!
Trivia question: how many times did you spot Katie Wynn's shoes on the wrong feet?