pre-Easter celebrations

I don't know how it happened, but somewhere in the last 6 years, our once single day of Easter celebration has turned into a multitude of festivities. It's most likely due to the fact that we have children now, because prior to that, I can't recall anyone inviting Mark and I over to hunt for eggs or look for baskets or anything like that.

Now-a-days, our Easter celbrating traditionally begins on Palm Sunday, a.k.a. "Early Easter" with the Muehlecks. Grandma and Buck are often traveling over the actual Easter holiday, but they never miss a chance to round up the youngest of their 13 grandkids for a big old-fashioned egg hunt in their backyard.

The following week, me, Jack and Kara were invited to the home of a family we recently met through our Moms Morning Out group at church.  They had a wonderful pre-Easter party, complete with a vist from the Easter Bunny and an egg hunt.  And, if you're like me, when I say "egg hunt" you're envisioning lots and lots of plastic eggs filled with candy, snapped together and hidden around the house.  Nope.  Not that kind of Easter egg!  This dear woman took the time, energy and effort to blow out the insides of real eggs, hand paint designs on them, and fill them with confetti and candy.  Seriously.  What an amazing woman!

Next came Easter Saturday, a.k.a the day before Easter.  The day we'd better get cracking and color some eggs!  This is perhaps my favorite day of them all.  You see, poor Jenna, Kara, and Jack were born to two different parents who are both capable of exhibiting Type A characteristics from time-to-time.  While my Type-A-ness is pretty standard, Mark's is not.  He's typically laid-back, easy-going, and the ying to my yang.  When it comes to letting the kids make a mess?  Not so much.  In fairness to Mark, I should say that he wasn't always this way.  Sure he probably inherited his fair-share of the tidy gene (and I'm not going to say from which parent ... ((cough, cough))Buck((cough, cough)) ... but things took a turn for the worse back in 2007 during the great Easter egg coloring debachle.  Fast-forward 2 years and you still have a daddy who is a little gun-shy about letting his children color eggs unassisted.  Or, for that matter, participate in coloring the eggs in any way.  Besides watching daddy do it.

The kids were undoubtedly bored

but patient, and happy

And me?  It's the one day a year where I'm perfectly capable of turning off my Type-A gene to watch Mark's in action.  And to laugh and take pictures, of course : )