Easter Full of Egg Hunts

Our Easter can be summed up with one word - chocolate.  Lots of it.  With three days in a row of egg hunts and visits from both the American and German Easter bunnies, the quantity of chocolate the kids received rivaled Halloween. I've got to find a non-candy tradition for next year.

Soren, Kiera and Matteo had their first egg hunt at preschool on Friday, where each child was designated a color and searched the classroom and hallways for four eggs of that color. I actually thought that was a nice variation on the usual free-for-all. Because that's what they got on Saturday. 

The Germanic-American Institute puts on an egg hunt to raise money for their preschool program.  They actually have two egg hunts, one for the little kids in the fenced-in playground and the other out on the main lawn of the property.  The kids waited semi-patiently on the walkways surrounding the lawn as volunteers like Celina and Alina kept a watchful eye. Then the organizer blew her whistle and kids went scrambling. Some eggs were filled with candy, others with tokens the kids could exchange for small toys and a few with "golden tickets" good for specialty chocolates or German baked goods.  We ended up with one golden ticket, lots of tokens the kids enjoyed exchanging and of course, loads of chocolate. 

We spent Easter at Chris' parent's house where the final egg hunt took place.  Those Easter bunnies made our kids work for those eggs they were hidden so well!

Matteo got so into this egg hunt and yelled with delight upon each egg he found.

The "German Easter Bunny" (aka, our au pair, Celina) even left Chris and me a surprise.

 

We also enjoyed a wonderful brunch at the grandparents' with pancakes, an egg bake and Celina's homemade Hefezopf, a bread baked at holidays. Between that and the chocolate, we were practically in a food coma by mid-afternoon.  

Easter

What a difference from last Easter, which we spent in Philadelphia, where the trees and flowers already showed signs of spring. It was really windy, but also so sunny we squinted like we hadn't seen the sun all winter. The kids ran threw the lush lawn at my stepsister's place hunting for eggs. On the last day of March this year, winter was still trying to hold its grasp on Minnesota. Our soggy, muddy lawn sat under a remaining layer of snow and the windchill made the air feel colder than the day's high of 36 degrees.

Oliver noticed his Easter basket as soon as he came downstairs yesterday morning. His favorite part of the day may have been that he got to eat chocolate before breakfast. He was leery of the jelly beans and looked interested in the Cadbury eggs, but wasn't feeling adventurous and stuck with what he knew he liked - good old milk chocolate.  I eventually cut Oliver off so he'd actually eat breakfast and that's when he very seriously turned to me and said that he was going to hide his Easter basket so Daddy wouldn't eat all his chocolate.  Now, I can't totally pick on Chris, because Oliver is actually usually hiding chocolate from his chocoholic mom.  And I have memories of my mom swiping chocolate from my Easter basket as a kid, so Oliver was trying to stay one step ahead of us.  It's just that he hid his basket in a room with the childproof cover on the doorknob, so when he wanted to retrieve his stash, he had to ask for my help to get to his "hidden" basket of chocolate.   

The kids also received stickers and colored masking tape in their baskets. Yes, the Easter Bunny gave them tape. But the Easter Bunny knows what a three-year-old likes. That stuff kept both kids occupied the rest of the day. I spent that evening scraping stickers and tape off windows, floors and counter tops, but they had fun.

Despite the un-spring-like weather, the sidewalks were clear of snow, so before our guests arrived, I plopped Soren in the stroller, zipped up his cozy stroller cover and headed out for some fresh air and a walk. Grandma and Grandpa were already here when we returned and once Uncle Andy and his girlfriend arrived, we sat down for a very nontraditional Easter brunch of breakfast burritos.

There was one thing on the menu for dessert. Chocolate! Our talented nanny had made us a traditional chocolate Easter eggs like she grew up having on Easter in Brazil.  We cracked the egg open in inside were homemade chocolates.  Soren had missed out on the pre-breakfast chocolate, but by this point, he wanted his fair share and before long, had a mouth covered in chocolate. 
Because of the weather, we never had our Easter egg hunt.  The kids were having so much fun playing with extended family that I didn't want to interrupt them.  Soren went down for a nap and Oliver eventually experienced a sugar crash.  And yes, I sampled the chocolate from the kids' Easter baskets. 

Easter

One of the beautiful things that has come out of my dad's marriage to Debbie has been lively and large family gatherings.  The Partenheimers will never rival the size of Chris's family, the Polish version of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, but when I at one point felt like my family was nearing extinction, witnessing at Easter how much my family has grown was really special. 

I've rarely been home for Easter since I was in high school, but the pace of the weekend seemed as if it were making up for lost time.  We got in dinner at my brother's apartment where we met his lovely girlfriend and her warm and crazy family, we watched a Silly String fight unfold between my step-niece and -nephew, we ran with the kids around the yard as they hunted for Easter eggs, we let Oliver gorge himself on chocolate until his lips and the perimeter of his mouth was smeared with brown, we enjoyed the attention our children attracted from every single little old lady who lived in my grandmother's retirement home where we were staying. By the time we got home on Easter Monday, I wanted a nap. 

It was great to spend time with my family, but the visit was not without some effort given that we had to get our growing family on a plane and fly from Minnesota to Philadelphia.  It wasn't the flight itself that was the difficult part, it was transporting our stuff.  We packed three large suitcases, three carry-ons, a stroller and two car seats - for a four-day trip.  I felt ridiculous when I finally had everything packed up the night before and realized how much we were bringing.  I'm sure we turned some heads at the airport with Chris carrying a backpack and pushing Oliver's stroller with his car seat draped over the back while pulling large suitcase #1 behind him, and me with Soren strapped to my front in the Ergo, carrying a backpack and pushing large suitcase #2 and pulling large suitcase #3 behind me.  I saw no way to avoid the amount of luggage.  We couldn't not bring the car seats (at least we checked them this time) and then there's all the gear and a gazillion changes of clothes kids need.  Our carry-ons duplicated, just on a smaller scale, the contents we'd packed in the suitcases - extra change of clothes, diapers, wipes, toys, books, snacks and so on - because you have to be prepared for anything once you're confined to your seats on a plane.  The only thing low-profile about our packing was that the only stroller we brought was an umbrella stroller instead of the double stroller I sometimes refer to as "the tank."

After everyone and everything made it safely to the airport, we boarded a 7:15 a.m. flight.  While it was painful to get up so early, the morning flight was perfect timing for the kids. We made the slightly-over-two-hour flight to Philadelphia before Oliver's nap time, which meant he was actually in a great mood the whole flight.  We set him up with his coloring books and an iPad loaded with Thomas the Train and Bob the Builder movies and he was happy.  Soren has reached the point where he needs to nap in his crib, so it was a struggle for him to fall asleep in my arms, and he fussed a lot from the time we pulled away from the gate to take-off.  About a minute after take-off though, his eyelids started drooping and 30 seconds later he was out. 

We almost made it to our final destination without one mishap or meltdown when we hit traffic. At 11:30 a.m. on a Friday. With two suddenly overtired and hungry kids screaming in the backseat.  And a Garmin that was determined to detour us through the "real" side of Philadelphia.  Our luck turned around when we ended up driving through the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University campuses and found a parking spot behind a row of gourmet food trucks and across the street from a park.  We ended up eating some of the best food of our trip and Oliver got to run around on a gorgeous sunny spring day.  It was an adventure, but the experience did make me worried about ever attempting to travel by myself with the kids or even how we'd travel with a third kid. 

The rest of the weekend was a whirlwind time with extended family, some of whom were meeting Soren for the first time.  One of the most precious memories for me was watching my grandmother hold her newest great-grandson for the first time.  She'd brought him a book and he sat on her lap and looked intently at the pictures as she read to him.  Then he leaned in and tried to eat the book. 

Another favorite moment was watching my grandmother play with Oliver on the playground we went to the next morning.  She "drove" the bus with him, pushed him on the swings, played hide and seek and, ever the nervous type, helped spot him as he climbed on the play equipment. 

After commenting on how many neat improvements they'd made to the playground over the years, (she used to bring me to this playground when I was little) she examined a spiral ladder and announced she thought it'd be fun to climb. I encouraged her to go for it. "Nah," she said. "Maybe if no one was around," she finished with a bashful smile. 

Beautiful Easter Sunday

We are not church-going folks, not even for holidays, and as a vegetarian, I don't even get excited about the Easter ham, so Easter for me is more a signal of spring. A dose of sun and warm weather is what we finally got after a dismal week of rain and cold temperatures.

The grass even dried out enough for Oliver's first Easter egg hunt. We went over to the in-law's for breakfast and afterward Oliver "hunted" for the plastic eggs my mother-in-law had stocked with Oliver's favorites - Cheerios, Goldfish and cars. The hunt consisted of Oliver's dad and Uncle Andy leading him toward each egg,(Look over there, is that an egg? Let's go see this egg over here...) with Grandpa and Mom following his every move with cameras, but even without the coaching, he would have probably gotten the idea. The experience was a big step up developmentally from Halloween when he was so bewildered, (being stuffed in a costume probably didn't help) but today he understood that the eggs went in his Easter basket and then after Dad helped him open the eggs, plopped down on the grass and contently munched on his treats. I wished at that point the eggs were filled with chocolate for Oliver to "share" with Mom, but as we packed up to head home for Oliver's overdue nap, his grandpa slipped a bagful of jelly beans and chocolate bunnies into my purse.