Carrot Bubbles and Easter Cars

I know I just posted something, but then I realized I really couldn’t let Easter go by without talking about it a little!  

The big family fun festivities took place on Friday night.  We all got together at my parents house for our first annual Easter egg hunt (stuff like that is just more fun now that we all have little kids...) and decorating Easter egg cookies (stuff like decorating Easter EGGS is NOT more fun now that we all have little kids...).  It was super windy, but warm and the cousins had fun finding eggs in the backyard.  bug collected more than his fair share, and we meant to divvy them up among the others but somehow escaped home without accomplishing that.  So he now has at least 25 eggs upstairs filled with stretchy bunnies, chocolate, and fruit snacks.  He did attempt to decorate some cookies but got really distracted by the mini chocolate chips and ended up eating half the bag before they actually made it on any cookies.  

Unfortunately, I have no pictures to document any of this because I forgot my camera.  Typical.  I’ll be getting copies of everyone else’s eventually.

Today, we had a leisurely morning since Easter coincided with our church's semi-annual conference which is televised through satellite.  It starts at 11:00 out here, so we got an extra two hours added to our Sunday morning and we got to “go to church” in our family room in front of the TV, which confused bug a great deal, but really pleased mr and me.  Before the conference, bug got to find his Easter basket which was “hidden” under a chair in the living room.  He had a lot of fun opening up eggs which were filled with jelly beans (in my opinion, the Easter candy staple), stickers and cars (Daddy’s favorite part...)  He also got bubbles in the form of a carrot (I was in love with this) and a chocolate bunny.  The jelly beans were the big hit, until he noticed the chocolate bunny.  He cried when we took it away after he ate half of it in one sitting.  Candy holidays are hard on two yr olds!  He will be a chocoholic like his mom.

After watching “church” on TV, we went to my mom’s to visit with my grandma (who we refer to as the GREAT grandma - as in awesome) and have the traditional ham dinner.  bug was thrilled to play with cousin G, and G was thrilled to play with mini’s Easter basket treasure - a “sensory block” (which made me ticked when I got it out of the box and looked at it to realize that I could have made it and it probably would have been cooler.  ah well.)  bug took a nap and mr and I played a game with my parents - which they played reluctantly (since, according to my dad, he is not a “game” person) but ended up loving (we told them they would!).  bug even got to see K for a little while when she and her parents got back from visiting her other grandma.

bug and mini also got to open their Easter presents from our family out in Utah.  bug got an awesome homemade alphabet book, personalized, from his uncle J and mini got these stellar shoes from her aunt A.  Both of them get an A+. (bug asks for his alphabet book to be read at bedtime).  We come from creative stock, don’t we?

All in all, a great holiday.

I have to add my favorite moments from the day.  First, when I got bug out of bed this morning, I reminded him that it was Easter and that Easter was a special day.  I told him again about how we get Easter baskets from the bunny and have lots of fun decorating eggs and playing with family, but that the real reason was for Jesus.  I told him that just like on Christmas, we celebrate Christ’s life, we celebrate Christ’s life on Easter too, because Easter was the day that Jesus came alive after being dead and this means that we will too!  Deep stuff for a two yr old, I know, but you have to start sometime, right?  Although he seemed to listen,  I wasn’t sure how much of it he understood, but I really want to make sure that we keep the true meaning of the holidays in our celebrations and in our hearts.  So, we went downstairs and bug was all aflutter about finding his basket, so I figured it was completely lost on him.  

He wanted to take the cars he got in his basket to Oma’s house (that’s my mom), so mr kept referring to them as his “Easter cars” so he would know which ones we were talking about.  “We can take your Easter cars...” “Don’t forget your Easter cars...” etc.  

Then later on, when we got home, mr asked if his Easter cars made it home with him and bug responded, “Here are my Jesus cars!”  

I hope no one finds this sacriligous or anything.  It made me smile to think that at least he understood that “Easter” means “Jesus.”  

And I’ll admit it, I smiled at the thought of Jesus driving a car, too.