Easter Weekend

I haven’t had time to post in the last few days and it feels like so much has happened (nothing major – just lots of little stuff) and what typically happens is I overwhelm myself with all I want to write and so I end up writing exactly nothing.

I’m going to try to not do that this time.

So I’ll start where we left off…Easter weekend.

On Good Friday we spent the morning decorating Easter Eggs.  This was M’s first time dying Easter Eggs and I think it’s safe to say he loves it.  Although he has the patience of a fly and so always wanted to take the eggs out of the dye after about 2 seconds.  I had ended up just hardboiling the eggs instead of blowing them out as I usually do.  I tried to blow out a couple but both eggs ended up cracking so I threw up my hands in disgust and gave up.  So each child had 5 eggs to dye.  It didn’t seem like enough.  Next year I’m gonna have to splurge for two dozen eggs I think.  The thing is that I have a horrible guilty conscience buying just one dozen white eggs – those poor chickens! – let alone two dozen.  Is there such a thing as free range white eggs and I just haven’t seen them? 

Friday afternoon we all napped.  I mean all 4 of us.  And we slept. All of us.   It was lovely.  And obviously much needed.  Much refreshed we went to my brother’s house to celebrate my beautiful little niece’s third birthday.  It was a really fun time with good food and good visiting and tons of kids.   There’s so much good stuff you could get a three year old, you know?  Three is the prime gift giving age, I think.  We ended up finding her a high chair for her dolly that also converts to a little swing.  I hope she gets lots of use out of it.  I could totally picture her feeding her babies in it!

On Saturday morning we headed out to the Up Park for a neighbourhood Easter Egg hunt.  It was put on by a local church and it was really fun to see all the neighbourhood kids there with their Easter Baskets.  The sun was shining and the feeling community was very strong.  I liked it.  A lot.  There were games to start which was really just kids running back and forth in a barely organized chaos.  I think they had fun, though!   

Then there was a mad scramble for eggs and candy that were not so much hidden as thrown-about-randomly.  I think it might have been fun if they had actually hidden the eggs, but that’s just me.  M didn’t get much candy because every little candy he would find he would pick up and in the time it took him to hold it up to me and say “Look Mommy!  Lollipop!” and carefully place it in his basket, all the other candy around him had been snatched up.  H, on the other had, carefully strategized with Aven her best plan to get maximum candy and had cleaned up quite handily.

Also on Saturday Aven started his building project for the year.  Or, I should say, the first building project of the year.   I already have another one in mind for him!  But the project he did during the weekend was to build a platform over the steps in our backyard leading down to our basement door.  When our house was first being built, we had specifically told our contact at the builder’s that we did not want the door in our basement or the steps in the back yard leading down to said door.  Our back yard is small and those stairs eat up a lot of realestate.   So we happened to be driving by the building site just as the builders where pouring the concrete for the steps.  When Aven approached the foreman, he said that would have been no problem to leave the stairs out but it was too late now. Apparently our contact ‘forgot’ to pass on our request.  Bugger.  Hence the platform.  The big black metal railings are gone and there is now a lovely raised little platform that is waiting for me to stain it.  It has opened our back yard right up and it is just so much better.  I will have to post some pictures.  Sadly I always forget to take the ‘before’ pictures. 

Saturday evening after the little man’s nap we piled in the truck and headed out to West Vancouver to visit Aven’s mom.  She has recently moved out there and we had yet to see her new apartment.  She made us a fabulous dinner and then we headed out to spend the rest of the evening at the ocean side.  There’s a great playground and rock area to play on and the kids had such a fun time we had a hard time dragging them away.  I must confess that I feeling a bit grumbly on the way there.  I was feeling very put out because she had previously lived 2 minutes from us and I had really liked that.  Now she’s much farther and it bugged me.  After sitting by the ocean for a few minutes though, I appreciated the location she had chosen and decided to give up my selfish thoughts and enjoy the gift of a reason to visit the ocean that much more.  I do believe West Vancouver and I will become good friends. 

On Easter Sunday I had to work.  Blech. 

The Easter Bunny didn’t come until the afternoon for us because of that but it was still fun.  I told the truth to H about the Easter Bunny because she had asked me point blank and wouldn’t accept my evading answering-with-questions responses.  And one hand it did seem to sink in that Aven and I were the Easter Bunny but on the other hand, although we were out and she was with us the whole time she would say “Why hasn’t the Easter Bunny come yet?  I don’t understand…”   And just other things she would say indicated that she wasn’t quite ready to come to terms with the fact that there really was no Easter Bunny.  Funny girl.

 

On Easter Monday I had to work.  Double Blech.  Especially since everyone else that I knew was not working.  Ah well, that’s life.  Suck it up, Buttercup.  Just be glad you have a job when lots don’t.  That’s my pep talk to myself.

The other day me and Miss H were driving along and I had scratched my nose or something with one had and kept the other on the shifter.  (cause I drive stick.  That’s right.  And I LOVE it but that’s another post entirely!)   So suddenly I hear from the back seat “Mom!  You were driving there with NO HANDS for a minute!”   Oh yeah.  I tried to brush it off casually because I was expecting a serious lecture from Miss Safety Nazi.  Instead I hear her breathe “That was sooo cool!” 

Yeah, that’s right.  I will probably always remember that because I seem to rapidly moving over to the not-cool side of life in her eyes.   

I will leave you with a few photos taken by our budding photographer, Miss H...