We had so much fun enjoying spring and celebrating Easter this year! This is way past-due, but we packed in a lot of fun this season!
A couple weeks before Easter, one of our sweet neighbors brought Cooper a surprise he absolutely loved--egg shaped sugar cookies with icing and candy for decorating! It was a little kit from Publix, and it was fantastic! Cooper loved decorating the cookies, and they tasted pretty good too. This is something I would like to become a new tradition for us! (Much easier and more fun than the sugar cookies he and I usually bake for Easter!)
The next day we went to get our picture made with the Easter bunny at the mall. Cooper calls him by his full name, Peter Cottontail, and did great yelling it in pure excitement as soon as we saw him. Then he got a little star struck when it was our turn. He just stared at him with the biggest grin on his face. He happily sat next to him, and I was sure Jake would cry when I handed him off to some freaky looking furry creature (it was definitely an odd and ugly looking bunny) since he tends to cry when strangers even look at him, but he did great too! After our pictures, we got lunch from the food court and sat where we had a good view of Mr. Cottontail. Cooper occasionally would holler to him and wave while we ate. Since he was so good and Jake was content in his stroller, we walked down to the toy store to play for a little bit. As nap time approached, we decided to head home, but we stopped and grabbed some Easter bunny shaped cookies to snack on during the ride home. It was a wonderful and special little outing with my two sweethearts; it couldn't have been better!
Next up was a community spring festival on Saturday morning. This was especially enjoyable for me because I missed last spring's festival because I'd just had my cerclage surgery, and then I was very pregnant with Jake (as in two days away from having him) at the fall festival. I love these festivals though! There were several activities for kids, vendors for shopping, food stations, and tractor rides! I only got pics of us during the tractor ride because it was the only time we were still! One of the food vendors who comes to the festivals sells these little sweet potato pies. They are scrumptious!!!!!!! I love them and look so forward to getting a couple! I actually couldn't even wait until we got home to eat the first one. I couldn't make it to the car either. I only made it a few feet before temptation got the best of me. I didn't even have a fork either. God gave us hands for a reason, right?!
From the festival, we drove to an awesome Easter Egg Hunt my friend Kim was hosting at her house. Cooper had a blast, and this might definitely have been his favorite thing of all. I asked her if she would mind doing this every year from now on because we enjoyed it so much!
The following week was Easter week, which meant Cooper and I had to get going on our crafts! We love Easter/Spring crafts! This year we dyed Easter eggs in Kool-Aid like we did last year, and I love that! It smells better, and the colors are brighter too. Cooper enjoyed dying eggs this year more than ever before and even caught on to how to do half the egg one color and the other half a different color (I didn't think to try this with him until we had about four eggs left). Once our eggs were dry, we put them on the dining room table to use as our Easter centerpiece. Our favorite craft we did was making marbled eggs with cardstock though. We put shaving cream in a jellyroll pan, added globs of finger paint (and learned later that drops of food coloring probably works better), and swirled it into the shaving cream using a fork. Then you lay a sheet of cardstock on top, and push it in the shaving cream; lift it out gently; set it on the counter for a couple minutes; scrape off the cream and paint with the flat side of a butter knife; let it dry, cut out an egg shape; and voila, marble eggs! They were really cool! We over-swirled our paint and shaving cream because we were rookies this year, but next year we'll know better. We'll probably just do the food coloring too instead of finger paint. Nonetheless, it was so fun, and we both loved it! I strung the eggs up on ribbon and hung them on the fireplace to make a nice little banner. I know the pictures of this activity came out small in the collage, but here is a link from where I found this activity if you want to try it too: http://www.wral.com/lifestyles/goaskmom/blogpost/10897326/.
We also made a bunny puppet with a lunch sack. I didn't think this would be very exciting or fun, but Cooper loved it and still is playing with that puppet! He loves to chase Sadie around the house with it! :) Later that week, we had practice Easter egg hunts around the house. But to change it up a little, I broke the eggs in half, so he would have to find both pieces and put them back together. It was fun because we would always end up with a couple half pieces that were different colors, and he would have to search more to find their match. As he gets older, I can write capital letters on one half and lowercase on the other, and he has to match them. Or I can write a number on one half and corresponding dots on the other for him to match. The kindergarten teacher in me really comes out this time of year! Or I could just let him hunt eggs like a kid likes to do with no learning purpose involved! After we were done hunting eggs (we took turns hiding them and the other one would then hunt...he would always show me where he hid each of the eggs though!), we picked a few different sizes. We got one big, one medium, and one small and broke them into halves again. We put each half in a different color bowl of paint. I gave him paper, and he stamped the circles on there in different sizes and colors. It was pretty cool! He also brought home a ton of adorable Easter crafts he did at school during April. His bulletin board in his room was full of beautiful spring artwork!
He also had an Easter egg hunt at school that week. It was so cute seeing his sweet little friends run around grabbing those eggs! I don't feel comfortable posting pictures of children whose families I don't know, so here is just one his teacher took of my little egg hunter and me after he was done.
On Good Friday, Karl was off work, and we met my mom for lunch. Cooper didn't want his picture made because he was too busy playing with some Ninja Turtle stuff his nana had brought to entertain him, but Jake was somewhat cooperative!
Now onto Easter Sunday! Despite all the crafts you've seen and our baskets, we really do keep the emphasis of Easter on Jesus. That's what Easter is about. Period. We had fun, exercised our creativity, and got cool stuff in our baskets, but we worked very hard keeping the focus on Jesus and his resurrection. I just felt like I needed to throw that in there right now! Although we talked about the Easter Bunny, Cooper knew on Easter morning that this was the day we were celebrating the "tomb being empty because Jesus rose" as he said. On Easter morning, he didn't even think about his basket! Well, Mr. Cottontail had left a bag with a note inside it outside our front door to find when we let Sadie out. The note told the boys that he had hidden eggs outside and to use the bag to collect them, but to follow a trail of eggs to find their baskets. He also said he had put Cooper's favorite candy inside the eggs. When I asked Cooper what that was, he said, "Jelly Beans!!!" I looked at him kind of panicked, and then he yelled, "Skittles!" Whew! Cooper took the bag and ran around the front yard collecting his eggs. When he had them all, he said he didn't see a trail. We told him maybe there were some more eggs on the other side of Daddy's truck. He ran over, and sure enough, there was a trail of eggs that led to the screened in porch, and guess what?!?! Inside the porch were the boys' baskets! Each boy got a couple toys, some goodies, and matching bathing suits! Cooper didn't surprise me at all and immediately went for the ninja turtle toys, but Jake did surprise me. I thought he would go for the stuffed animal, but he wanted that little soccer ball! It was a fun way to do the Easter baskets, and the Easter Bunny did a good job groggily hiding the eggs at 4:30 in the morning after she had fed the baby, if I do say so myself. And yes, most of the eggs were just thrown around the front yard rather than strategically hidden or gently placed.
After the excitement of the baskets, we made our resurrection rolls and scrambled eggs as we do every year for Easter breakfast. Cooper's amazement at the empty roll quickly turned to disappointment because he really wanted that marshmallow!
It was a wonderful Easter. I loved all the fun stuff that we did leading up to Easter, but that was really just to celebrate spring. I really loved that Cooper seemed to have somewhat of a grasp on the Easter story this year. I loved hearing him talk about how the tomb was empty and why. As a parent Easter is my favorite holiday. I love spring, and I love all the fun stuff we can do outside after being cooped up inside all winter and the crafty stuff we can make, but that's not what makes me love Easter. As a mom, I love it because I know my children's future is safe. It's been secured. They have been saved. I know where they're going when they leave this Earth, and I pray I'll be there to greet them with our Savior. Because of Jesus, I'll get to spend eternity with my children in tow. With a humble and grateful heart, I celebrate Easter.
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