Easter Americana

Easter was a little different for us this year.  A good different. You need to understand that we have never had Easter with kids in America before.  Ever. 

In Taiwan I lucked out and happened upon a cute basket for Jade in some random little shop selling all sorts of junk.  We have been using it ever since.  I needed to buy a couple of baskets for the boys this year.  This was probably the trickiest part of Easter for me.  I looked at baskets at pretty much every store I went to for a few weeks.  I even looked online.  The options were endless.  Making major life-changing decisions is not hard for me, but give me something simple—like choosing a silly little Easter basket—and I have THE hardest time!!  I mean, look at this.  And that’s just one store! 

Nevertheless, I made it through somehow.  Next up was candy.  Not quite as hard.  We have our favorites and we have been without for five years, so I just bought them all.  Pretty sure we just finished the last of it this week.  I *may* have gone a little overboard.  Lesson learned.

The day before Easter we were invited to a picnic and egg hunt with several families from our ward.  I think they hid hundreds of eggs all over the park for all the kids to find!  A hunt of this caliber was something pretty foreign to my children.  Ridge caught on pretty quick with Dad’s help.  Jade?  Not so much.  She knew well enough that she needed to find eggs.  Buuut there were also a plethora of fun friends to pal around with.  She chose the latter.  That social butterfly decided it was more of a social event than a competition to find eggs.  She tried harder to keep up with the group of girls running to find eggs, than to actually pick up some of her own!  Ridge probably had at least a dozen eggs, if not twenty, by the end.  Jade had six.  Six!  Oh and I think that was after she told me she saw Ridge had more than her because Dad was helping him, so she took some of his to be fair.

  

Oh but that’s not the end of the story.  After all the eggs were found, our friends were collecting all the plastic eggs to keep for next year.  The kids were bringing the ones they found and dumping them in a big box.  Jade excitedly took her basket and dumped her six eggs into the box.  Then she happily skipped over to show me her empty basket.  I said, “Did you get the candy out first?!”  Her face sunk.  It didn’t take long to find the few eggs in the box with candy still in them.  We had a good laugh at our little girl from China who doesn’t know what to do at a real Easter egg hunt! 

 

The next day, Jade left some of her candy with a card for the Easter Bunny.

 

It didn’t take Ridge long to find the chocolate in his basket. 

 

For the first time ever, we actually have a yard!  We took full advantage of it and hid all the eggs outside.

 

 

 

  

Even though Jade knew what to do this time, she was still really good about slowing down to help Ridge find eggs too.

   

The kids were pretty happy with their loot!

After a delicious ham dinner and our traditional homemade Easter éclairs for dessert, Cody gave us a nice lesson about the real reason for Easter. 

 

Then it was time for bed, with no time to color eggs.  We ended up stretching Easter one more day and colored them on Monday night instead!