4/5/2013 Easter is one of those days that means a lot to me, for various reasons. My last Easter with my mom was one of the best! That year my birthday landed on the same day as Easter. We were in Florida with my ENTIRE family (more details about that trip later). Tommy had just proposed to me two days before, it just couldn’t get any better.
Easter also holds a lot of traditions. Every year my mom would take us to get an Easter outfit…they often were matching outfits. One year this happened…
And this happened again many years later…
We always dyed eggs and had an egg hunt. Ashley always made the brightest blue egg and I HATE looking for eggs because I can never find them. Every year we ALWAYS came up short an egg (someone could never remember where they hid them). We typically went to church and celebrated the resurrection of Jesus. When we got home from church we always had egg salad sandwiches. My dad would be in the kitchen working on a feast, I think it usually included a roast (Dad doesn’t eat ham). Family would usually come over for dinner and we would enjoy eachothers company. After my mom passed Easter just wasn’t exactly the same. My students became my extended family so I started a newish tradition with them. We would have a picnic complete with egg salad. Honestly these picnics are some of my favorite memories. One year I got us lost on a trail in the Santa Rosa Plateau, but it makes for a great story and I like to believe everyone had fun. Now I cling tight to my childhood traditions, more so now because we have Zoe. Last year my birthday landed on Easter again and we got to celebrate Zoe’s first Easter.
This year we are 1,900 miles away from family so we got to celebrate with just our little family. It started off on Saturday. I had saw a flyer for a candy grab/egg hunt. It was at the little park right down the street from our apartment. Thankfully most of the snow had melted, but unfortunately it was drizzling. Oh well, they said rain or shine, so we went anyways. Zoe was not a huge fan of the idea at first. She took a lot of coaxing and finally she tried to participate. We each tried to show her it was ok to pick up the eggs, we even showed her there was candy inside, but she wasn’t really having any of it. It took about 10 minutes for her to warm up and by then the eggs had been hunted.
When we got home it was time for a nap. After nap time we decided it was a good time to dye some eggs. Zoe had a lot of fun playing with the eggs and helping dip the eggs in the dye. She even dyed her fingers! She did however get a little frustrated and might I say mad that we would not let her swing her egg around in the whisk (oh, the tantrums have started). So instead of slinging the egg around we redirected her to some STICKERS! We put stickers on her nose, cheeks, arm, and hands. She happened to like the sticker on her nose and decided to leave it there. She keeps us both laughing.
On Sunday we did a mini egg hunt and opened Zoe’s Easter basket. She seemed to finally grasp the concept of getting the eggs and putting them in the basket. Yay!
After all that we got ready and walked over to church. Zoe went to the nursery and we enjoyed a the church service.
Once we got home it was nap time (Zoe has been catching a lot Zzzz’s lately). I got lunch together and we enjoyed an afternoon together.
We Facetimed with a few friends and family. Then I made dinner (Salmon, broccoli, brown rice, and jalepeno pinwheels).
Before the day was over I wanted to dress Zoe in the outfit I had picked out for her. Unfortunately it was an outfit meant for warmer weather! Oh, well. We stayed inside were it was a comfy 72 degrees.
Oh, and I almost forgot we met the Easter Bunny at Toddler Tuesday. Apparently it is perfectly acceptable to wave to the Easter Bunny in line, but once you get too close you better run! We have come to learn that Zoe does not liked masked characters. 
It is well with my Soul 