Hippity Hoppity Easter 2015

I'm catching up on Spring Things! Most of the month of March I felt absolutely buried under a mountain of appointments and I couldn't even begin to think about planning anything beyond Calvin's surgery. So I let my self plan nothing for Easter and nothing for Calvin's birthday ahead of time. I waited to see how we were all feeling post-op. And this was weird for me, considering that for his past two birthdays I literally started party planning in January. I know, I'm crazy.

But surgery came and went and all was well. Calvin was feeling even better than expected. So I talked to my cousins and we pulled together some last-minute ideas, including a super-last-minute rainout plan, and we ended up having a very nice Easter celebration.

On Saturday, our cousin Ramiro came over to color eggs with Calvin. We didn't try letting Henry participate in this one... maybe next year ;) They used plastic eggs to do some stamp painting while I got the cups of dye ready, then we dipped and dyed and dried and the eggs turned out colorful and bright!

Saturday night, the Easter Bunny apparently hopped into our apartment and left some goodies for Calvin and Henry, including eggs hidden around our living room!

We did not attempt to take the babies to church, but we did start the day with reading the Easter story and retelling the Easter morning story with our Duplos and Bible toys :)

 I made Easter sensory bins for the boys where they got to hunt for tiny eggs (shh! Don't tell them they're candy!) and butterflies in Easter "grass." I even got edible Easter grass for Henry!






Later the boys hunted for the eggs hidden around the living room. That sneaky Easter bunny filled the eggs with some of their favorite little toys from our small world play! Little plastic dinosaurs, animals, and bugs ;) (They have no idea that Easter eggs are "supposed" to have candy. They were totally happy to find their own little toys hidden inside! Wonder how long we can get away with that trick...)

Then our cousins came over! And they helped me make the cute little bunny pudding cups. Pudding cup + coconut shreds dyed green with food coloring + jelly beans + Peeps bunnies + a Sour Punch straw for the handle!

I did pudding instead of my usual cupcakes because of Calvin's mush-food-only post-surgery diet. He couldn't eat any of the candy on top. These doubled as an Easter and a birthday treat and we all gathered around Calvin to sing Happy Birthday.

Of course, the obligatory family Easter photos! I can't resist. Plus, our wild and unkempt backyard looks pretty in Spring, even with the drought :)

It had rained that morning, which is why we were at our place instead of at a park like we had hoped, but it was barely a drizzle and it got nice and sunny in the late afternoon. Since the sun was out and the yard was hardly wet, Calvin, Ramiro and Abbie did a little egg hunt in the backyard. 

And then we put bunny ears on the babies and stuck them in a basket full of Easter grass and stuffed animals. And they hated it. Until we started blowing bubbles, and then they were like, OK this isn't so torturous after all :)

Ew. What is this stuff?? It's all... ew. I hate this.

Get this stuff off me! Get me out!!!

Wait. Are those... bubbles? 

We LOOOOOVE bubbles!!!!

This is the GREATEST!!

LOL. The things I do to torture my kids for the sake of a cute picture.


Then we brought our basket of bunnies back inside and added baby cousin Evan! And Evan was like "Seriously, guys?" But by then Calvin and Henry were over it and were actually having fun in the basket!

:D Happy Easter!