Easter Weekend!

For our family, Easter is a celebration of Spring. Of course, we live in the South, so most of our friends and neighbors are celebrating Jesus' resurrection and even this Jewish girl knows that the phrase "He Is Risen" is grammatically correct. I use to feel like it really wasn't my place to celebrate Easter since I am not a Christian but, when you google the origins of "Easter", you will find that it is a celebration of Spring rooted in European traditions where a pagan figure, known as Eastre (or Eostre) was celebrated as the goddess of spring. A festival called Eastre was held during the spring equinox to honor her. The goddess Eastre’s earthly symbol was the rabbit, which was also known as a symbol of fertility. Originally, there were some very pagan practices that went along with the celebration. Today, Easter eggs and the Easter bunny are remnants of the goddess worship. So, I am just going to go ahead and embrace this holiday/ celebration of Spring (especially after that winter we just had)! 

Friday night, the kids had fun dying hard boiled eggs. 

Later that night, after the kids had gone to bed, I used those dyed eggs (along with about a dozen more) to make some deviled eggs for the next day. 

I also had fun making rice krispie treats using colorful Peeps instead of marshmallows. 

We kicked off our weekend with our first (annual??) Egg Hunt and Cookout at our house on Saturday afternoon. It was kind of a last minute decision to have this little party at our house. We usually do an Egg Hunt with DSAMT, but they didn't host one this year. I had been trying to find a good egg hunt for our kids, but everything was either a HUGE community event or it was a big church event. So, a couple weeks ago, Keith said, "why don't we invite our friends here for an egg hunt?" I told him that most of our friends probably had plans for Easter weekend and that it was kinda short notice. But he planted a little seed... and a couple of days later, I sent a few text messages to my Important People and as my phone chimed back one by one that they would be able to come, my excitement level went through the roof! I was so excited about our little event! I kept my fingers crossed that everyone would stay healthy and that the weather would be nice. And another miracle, EVERYONE stayed healthy AND the weather was GREAT (if a little on the cool side)!

We left our grass nice and tall for the party and Grandma Mel and I ran around "hiding" eggs just before the first guests began arriving. Once everyone arrived, we handed the kids their baskets and let them loose in the backyard. I *may* have gone a little bit overboard filling eggs for our party. There were probably 400 eggs for 10 kids. At first, the kids ran around grabbing up eggs, but it didn't take long for most of them to just abandon their baskets and go play instead of hunt for eggs. 

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My kids kept coming up one after the other, after the other, after the other handing me eggs to open, and then handing me a package candy to open. They ate a lot of candy that afternoon! Ha!

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I kept finding piles of egg "loot" tossed around. This was Daniel's mess...

This was Molly's mess. Her basket was so full that she dumped her basket so she could go back out and find more eggs (and there were PLENTY more out there for her to find). Ha!

We spent a laid-back afternoon playing in the backyard and eating dinner and hanging out on the back porch. It really was the most perfect group of people at our house that day. A house (and yard) full of people I love made me have lots of Big Feelings.

One by one, our guests departed and we were down to three WILD kids who needed a bath before we could toss them in bed. Daniel finally went to sleep when I told him that the bunny was going to bring him a surprise, but not until after he went to sleep. 

And, so, The Bunny came!

After they went crazy eating chocolate and other candies out of their Easter baskets, I made them some eggs, hoping that the protein and other healthy stuff found in eggs would offset ALL of that sugar...Of course, they barely touched the eggs. Oh, well... So, we sent them outside to play off some of the sugar instead. :)

We hope our friends and family had a great Easter! Happy Spring!