Easter Egg Hunts

This morning I decided to ignore the fact that my To Do list this weekend includes doing our taxes, cooking several nights worth of dinners to freeze, multiple loads of laundry, catching up on paperwork for work, etc. and took Monkey Boy (my son) to two Easter egg hunts. The first, at 8 am, was at our local Sprouts Farmers Market and was quite enjoyable. I loved that it was indoors, since it was still a little chilly when we arrived at 7:45. We invited another family from church, who have twin girls one year older than Monkey, to join us, so it was a merry bunch. The employees had set up the egg hunt in the bakery section and were very well organized in directing the kids where to go. After our little munchkins had filled their baskets, we proceeded to the back of the store, where tables were set up with crayons and markers for a coloring contest and bins of ice held little cartons of orange juice and chocolate milk. One of the employees did some face painting. Monkey requested this purple flower for his cheek. Sorry it's blurry - it's hard to get a preschool boy to sit still!

After a quick trip home for a potty break and to drop of the eggs from Sprouts, we headed over to our church, arriving just in time for the 10 am Easter egg hunt. The high school youth had been hard at work all morning, hiding eggs for the grade schoolers on one side of the church yard and "hiding" eggs for the Kindergarteners and younger on the other. Monkey was overjoyed to see his friends, the twins, twice in one day. All the kids gathered in the fellowship room for a group picture before heading out to fill their baskets. Monkey was, as usual, an aggressive hunter of eggs. One of the twins and he even insisted on checking the flower beds at the front of the church (picture to the left), even after the high schoolers assured them there were no eggs there.

Once all the eggs had been "found," we returned to the fellowship room where all the kids picked a special egg out of a large basket. Each of these eggs had a number inside, which corresponded to a bigger set of prizes. Monkey was very pleased with his Disney Princess bouncy balls and bendy bunny rabbit set.









Monkey also got to try his hand at cracking confetti eggs. Have you ever seen these things? It was a first for me today. They are apparently a Mexican tradition and, in my opinion, pretty darn awesome - as long as you're outside! Only one egg exploded inside the church, luckily. If you're interested in learning more about this craft, which apparently if fairly easy to make at home, check out this Associated Content article or this article on eHow. Here Monkey is practicing his skills on one of the very patient high school boys at our church. You gotta love it :-)

Once the egg hunt was over, most people headed out, but I had to stick around for church choir practice. Gotta get those Hallelujahs perfect for Easter morning services, right? Monkey headed down to the park adjacent our church with some of the other little people (supervised by the high school youth) and we got down to business. The best part of my morning, completely unexpected, happened when the whole thing was over and Monkey proudly presented me with the bouquet of dandelions he had picked me in the park. Talk about a perfect day with my sweet boy. Now, off to have lunch and to see if I can get Monkey settled down to take a little rest afterward, if not a real nap. Hope you all are enjoying a peaceful and sunny Saturday!