Easter Egg Hunt Extraordinairre

The holiday this year was a little different. For one thing, we had planned on Ellie coming out for Spring break and bought her plane ticket home for first thing Sunday morning based on a significant difference in cost only to realize after the fact that it was in fact Easter Sunday that she was leaving. Bummer. We decided to do an Easter egg hunt for the kids on Saturday morning instead and then our ward had a fantastic outdoor egg hunt for the Primary kids that afternoon. Once again I found myself at the store way too late at night the day before our Easter events endlessly deliberating what to do, and consequently buying way too much in the name of being afraid we'd run out. C'est la vie. The girls woke up to find their "baskets" on the couch and a bunch of eggs hidden around. While we pretended to get to sleep in we listened as they would yell "EGG!" every time they found a new one. Needless to say, I was huddled under the covers instead of taking pictures.

I made up for it at the Primary party.

It was a blast.

The men-folk frolicked through the wilderness spreading eggs for the wee ones to find. There were literally hundreds of eggs littering the lawn, hiding in tree branches, and inside shrubs.

Ellie was all business. It took mere moments for her to fill her basket and look for another receptacle.

Aeryn was a bit more focused on being with friends than with finding a million eggs. That said, she did fill her basket fairly quick too.

The guys created a "cornucopia" of eggs right in the middle of the yard, though unlike the Hunger Games my baby-boyfriend wasn't violent in trying to get his fair share of the spoils. Not that I'd have expected anything else... I think he's pretty much perfect (in three year old terms).

It was quite a fun scene. Kids all over, interspersed with parents wielding cameras.

Toward the end they joined forces. You can see Ellie holding Whippy's Easter basket here. She went around and filled the whole thing then gave it all back to Whippy. I think Ellie makes a total of four members of our family who would place an order for the "Whippy model" if it was that easy to acquire one.

After filling Whippy's basket, Ellie was still on a roll and found someone to loan her ANOTHER basket to fill. I think she sees a competition in everything. She wants to win/be the best or fastest at every single thing, but once the competition aspect of egg hunting was over she was completely non-possessive with the eggs she found and kept giving away candy.

The girls had a blast. Aeryn filled one basket, Ellie filled three. Aeryn let me take a picture of her with her spoils, Ellie didn't.

On Sunday morning Ellie and Jim had to leave for the airport just before 4am. Aeryn and I had a leisurely morning and didn't think about eggs or candy at all. It was really nice to do on Saturday and leave Sunday as a day for spiritual focus. I felt like a slacker mom because for the first time in Aeryn's life I didn't get her a new dress for Easter. She didn't seem to mind, or even notice. I'm sure I'll make up for it sometime soon.