The Hacker Five: Babies' First Easter

We had a fabulous Easter weekend. We kicked off the weekend with an Easter egg hunt/potluck BBQ at our new house with five other families on Friday night. We did this last year too, but the number of children increased exponentially this year. Last year we had 5 boys ages 1-2 and one baby girl. THIS year, we had 5 boys ages 2-3 and TEN babies under14 months!!!! We had four babies this year, another family had twins, two families each had one baby and we invited one new family with one baby! That is a lot of babies!! I wish we had gotten a picture of the entire group, but amidst the chaos it never happened. Can you imagine next year when all those babies are mobile?!

So call me brave or call me crazy, but not only did we have this enormous get together at our new house (only 3 weeks after moving in), but I decided to let the boys dye Easter eggs in my new kitchen (yes, you read that right). It seemed like a good idea, then we started setting up and I started panicking . . . but, the boys were great, no messes were made and a good time was had by all. Turns out it was a good idea!

Five little boys dying eggs!

Jackson of course had to have an orange egg (his favorite color).

My bunny cake. Not professional by any means, but Jackson loved it!

Jackson sharing cake with a friend. I couldn't believe either of these boys was willing to share cake!

Following the egg dye adventure, there was lots of good food and then THE HUNT! We hid a ton of eggs, some with candy, but most were confetti eggs. The boys lined up in a very orderly fashion to head outside and actually waited to take off until I said go. They were so good. No one was pushy or grabby and everyone got a lot of eggs! I do think Jackson ended up with the most though. He hit the jackpot on the back porch. All of the other boys headed out into the yard, so Jackson was able to clean up on the porch with little or no help from anyone else. He had the biggest grin on his face the whole time. He was pretty proud of his find! One of the other little hunters, having had some experience with egg hunting, was very discriminating in the ones he would pick up. He figured out quickly that the confetti eggs did NOT have candy and he would toss them back when he found them. So funny. However, once the hunt was over and we put all the confetti eggs together so the fun could really start, he soon discovered that they were actually pretty cool. The boys had the best time with the confetti eggs. I don't think anyone escaped the onslaught of confetti and I'm still finding little pieces of it in the house every now and then even though the fight was outside and we vacuumed as soon as everyone left! Our backyard looked like a confetti factory had exploded. So much fun! I think we may go with confetti eggs only next year, because who needs the candy? (Clint may have different ideas since he's the one that picked up all the egg shell pieces, maybe we'll find an off-site location).

Jackson with his booty from the porch!

The hunters with their loot!

Jackson getting Aunt Kiki

Confetti eggs

Clint's parents came down to celebrate Easter Sunday with us. They arrived Saturday night and to got to enjoy baskets, church and dinner with us the next day. Aunt Kiki joined us for dinner and some lazy Easter Sunday activities too. Jackson was so excited about the Easter Bunny coming, that he could not fall asleep. He was sleeping on the floor in our bedroom, since Mamaw and Papaw were borrowing his room. When Clint and I went to bed, he was STILL lying there awake!! I guess the excitement was too much for him. I told him that he better go to sleep or the bunny wouldn't visit and he quickly closed his eyes . . . until a few minutes later when said to me in a barely audible whisper, "Momma, I hear the Easter bunny filling our baskets right now." Gotta love the sharp ears of childhood :)

The Easter Bunny came!

Easter morning was full of wonder and fun. The babies, especially Brooklyn, had a really hard time waiting for Jackson to wake up to dig into Easter baskets. When Brooklyn saw those baskets, she bee-lined for them. Westin, on the other hand, noticed that the Easter Bunny had not finished his carrot and decided he take a bite or two.

Westin (This is one of my favorite pictures!)

When Jackson did wake up, he was so excited! He was excited about the baskets, he was excited the Easter Bunny had eaten his carrot and he was excited about more egg hunting. I love the excitement of a child. There is nothing like it!! I think my favorite part of Easter this year though, was definitely the Resurrection Eggs. If you don't own these, you should. We had some that were homemade when I was little (we had directions from the church and I think made them in a class), but you can buy them too. My mom bought some for us last year when I was talking about wanting to find instructions for making a set. Jackson loved these. We did them several times in the weeks leading up to Easter and a couple of times on Easter Sunday. The eggs have small items in them that help tell the story of Easter. Jackson wanted so much to understand the story of Easter this year and I never stopped to think about how hard this story would be to explain to a child until my child was asking. He couldn't understand why people would be mean to Jesus. He didn't know why they would hurt Him. I tried to be gentle in the telling, but it's just not a gentle story. He was satisfied with the happy ending, but he continues to very inquisitive about why the soldiers would treat Jesus that way when Jesus was "good." I loved that he wanted to do the eggs and hear the story over and over, even though I had trouble answering all the questions that followed. Seeing the beginning of Faith forming in your child is a pretty amazing thing! It was a great family holiday and Jackson is already counting down until next Easter!