How this city kid celebrates Easter

Unfortunately, there was no baby brother in our Easter baskets today.  He missed out on a lot of fun this weekend which is just as well I suppose since if he'd decided to make his appearance, we'd have missed out on this fun as well (though I'm sure we'd have had a totally different kind of fun).

Eric took off work on Friday to hang with Hannah who was off school for Easter break. Their daddy-daughter days are always chock-full of fun and very exhausting. On this one, they spent the first part of the morning at Port Discovery and then trekked down to The Aquarium before returning home half-asleep and happy mid-afternoon.

They rested up and then we brought new meaning to the term stoop sitting. Amy invited us to join in the egg-dying fun with her and Zoe and Nate, and since it was so nice outside, we took it to the sidewalk. It was a terrible spot to try to photograph since everyone was huddled in a very small half-circle facing the house, but we snapped a few, including some that Eric took by hanging out of the upstairs window.

Amy had these neat little no-spill, color coded egg-dying containers that the girls took turns plopping eggs into.

I wish Nate's face were in this one because I'm guessing, based on his hand gesture, that it was a pretty funny face.

Hannah had the official job of catching the eggs in a plastic mitt when they were finished soaking in the dye and then placing them back in the crate.

When nearly all were colored, I asked about polka dots...Nate ran in to get a candle and promptly started polka-dotting eggs in hot wax while Hannah watched mesmerized and continuously asked why it didn't hurt his fingers.

There were a few casualties that were far too cracked to be dyed which Nate and Zoey happily disposed of. Hannah had some bites of one but she's into a "no oak [yolk]" think lately so she left most of the egg-eating up to these two.

I seriously love Zoey's face in this one.

We spent yesterday at the circus (another blog post that I will hopefully get to before baby brother arrives), and then resumed Easter celebrations this morning with a whole-house egg hunt. Eric stashed some coins in some of the eggs, but we otherwise left them empty. As you know, I'm not into candy, even the less craptastic candy options are still unnecessary in my book. I allow the less craptastic options in VERY SMALL DOSES here and there (like a lollipop when we go to Trader Joe's), but I'm definitely not going to buy it and have it in the house. I'm also not into wasting money or house space on a bunch of junky toys just to stuff some eggs, though, quite honestly, if I were someone who shopped a lot and happened to be out and about and happened to come across something kind of fun and inexpensive, I might have given in on that one and purchased some junk. I wasn't going to make a special trip to the store though just to look for something to spend money on. And anyway, Hannah didn't care. She loved the thrill of finding the eggs and although she preferred the ones with change in them, she was happy finding the empty eggs too. As with the other holidays, we try to keep as much of the fun as possible without making more work for ourselves than is necessary. You can call it selfish if you want; I call it setting boundaries to maintain my own sanity. Whatever it is, it works for us so we're sticking to it.

None of the egg-hunting pics really came out, but here's one for posterity's sake.

Happy Easter if you're celebrating any parts of this celebration of spring, fertility, sex, resurrection, or whatever other threads we've woven into it over the centuries!!