Easter 2012

Easter is such a lovely time of year! The grass is greening up, the leaves are budding on the trees, and flowers are blooming. All of nature is gloriously coming back to life.

We have the most beautiful trees in our neighborhood! The streets are lined with pink and white blossoms, which are so gorgeous! Plus they make it smell so lovely outside.

I had so much fun with my kids for Easter this year! First we made some yummy bird's nest cookies out of chinese noodles and melted chocolate.

I did not anticipate just how many bird's nest cookies we would end up with! Since we had so many,  we got to take some to our friends.

Then of course we dyed our Easter eggs. This year I got smart, and we used a large muffin tin to put the dye in AND we colored our eggs outside! It was a gorgeous day, and I had to wonder why didn't I ever think of this before?! No drippy dye in my kitchen and no colored countertops! Hooray!

Jacob and Ephraim LOVED dying their Easter eggs. They kept asking me for more!

Luckily Amelia was occupied with Ephraim's tricycle, so I did not have to work too hard to keep her away from the egg dye.

Of course she cannot ride the trike, but she thinks it is fun to sit on it. So with Amelia busy, our egg dying experience turned out rather well.

I especially like the Easter eggs that I dyed with silk ties.

I have been meaning to try this for a while. We used old silk ties to dye the eggs. You wrap the eggs up in the ties and then boil them (instructions here). The dye from the silk transfers to the eggs. It was so fun to unwrap the eggs and see how awesome they turned out!

Then on Easter morning the kids discovered their Easter baskets. It was so much fun to see them exclaim about all their little prizes and goodies!

Apparently Ephraim was not so excited about the purple peeps.

Doesn't his expression just crack you up? Of course Amelia was happy with her Easter goodies because she really had no idea what was going on.

She did enjoy her peeps though! Yum, sugar!

She also thought her wings were pretty cool.

The boys got some fun bug boxes and nets to use to catch bugs. Oh what fun!

It was also amazing to me this year how much faster my little boys are getting at finding the eggs the Easter bunny hides. They were so fast that I didn't really get any good pictures. I guess the Easter bunny will have to be a bit more sneaky next year.


One of my favorite parts of the day was watching Amelia take everything in. She did not understand what was going on, but she loved it all! She especially enjoyed playing with the plastic eggs after the boys emptied all the candy out of them.

We took all the candy out of the eggs because a few of Ephraim's eggs had been invaded by ants. Apparently they wanted some jellybeans and robin's eggs too. Why do plastic eggs have holes in them anyway?

Amelia enjoyed those plastic eggs for hours! It was so stinkin' adorable.

She would scatter the pieces all over. Then if we gathered them up into the bucket she would do it all over again.

The best part of Easter for me was enjoying time with my family. I love these sweet kids and I am so blessed to have them in my life. They bring me so much joy!