The night before Easter, Annabel was so excited she had a hard time going to sleep. My cousin Leah and her fiance Ted were spending the night, which meant Annie got to sleep on a blow-up bed in our room. Mike spent some time trying to talk her to sleep (“My eyes just can’t get tired!”), and then sweet Leah went in and rubbed Annie’s back until she finally gave up the ghost. Annie can be a pretty solid sleeper, but that night she woke up three different times, laughing and shrieking, “It’s Easter!” Twice she woke up James…it was a really long night.

Because of last year’s egg debacle, I banned real eggs from our hunt and prepared plastic and confetti eggs. Since we didn’t want any animals getting to the candy-filled eggs, Mike set his alarm and hid the eggs out in our backyard at dawn. Well, he didn’t hide them exactly – Annie told us the day before, “I hope the Easter Bunny doesn’t make the eggs hard to find…I’m not good at hunting.” So Mike put all the eggs in plain sight.

egg hunt

Annie was so excited to look for eggs, and every time she found one she let out a high-pitched shriek. I think she was trying to shatter glass.

egg hunt

egg hunt

egg hunt

Once I showed Annie some of the eggs were filled with confetti, it was ON.

confetti eggs

confetti eggs

confetti eggs

My favorite:

confetti eggs

Jame didn’t really know what to make of the whole Easter thing, but he liked having everyone around.

Easter James

After we all cleaned up, we met up with the rest of my family at my parents’ house where my mom had prepared a huge spread of food. We always have very intense games of Scrabble, and this year was no exception. I chose not to play this year and I have to say, it was very enjoyable watching the rest of the players trash talk each other. My Aunt Terry won this round…but there WILL be a rematch!

My mom got the kids little gifts. Some clothes and a rattle car for James, and a dress and stuffed unicorn for Annabel. Annie declared the unicorn’s name to be “Horny.”

Annie and her unicorn

I could juuuuust picture Annabel taking that unicorn to show-and-tell and saying, “This is Horny!” and I couldn’t do it. Some quick googling revealed the unicorn’s given name to be Rarity. I told Annie and she replied, “Hmmm…that’s not special enough. How about ‘Sparklehorny?'” You got it, kid.

We now have James’ first Easter in the books, which means Mother’s Day is the last “first” holiday James has to experience before his first birthday. Crazy to think that a year from now he’ll be in the backyard, challenging Annie for Easter Eggs. Time flies.

I hope you all had a very happy Easter or a very nice Sunday, and that you all have lots of candy (please come take some of ours).

Easter Spohrs