Easter

We drove down to South Carolina to celebrate Easter with Jacob’s parents.  My mother-in-law loves holidays, and she loves any reason to get a themed gift package/basket for Anna. We loved celebrating Easter with them.  Anna dyed and hunted for eggs.  We all ate way too much candy.  The weather was perfectly spring like and much warmer than our New England digs.

Anna and Daisy went on a lot of walks.  Anna was such a bossy pants to Daisy, like us adults always are.  Anna was so cute when she told the dog “come on, Daisy” while curling her finger.  She did the finger curl palm down so her finger looked like an inch worm.   We would walk Daisy to the playground, which was always deserted and perfect for Anna to play on.  Anna was always disappointed if a dog walking did not end up there.  She loves playgrounds and having fun around that pond.

One time we were at the playground to let her chase eggs. We took a walk to the playground to have Anna chase Easter eggs and also to let her run on the ATV, but the battery was caput.  She easily found the eggs in the grass but the bushes were confusing to her.  But after Anna was done with the egg picking and we were all just standing around over fifty feet from the slide, she snuck over and started climbing the climbing wall.  She has never tried it before and was half way up it when I finished running over to spot her.

Another time at the park, I was ready to head home, one more time down the slide, I told her.  Then she came down and snuck over to the stairs again, “one more time,” she said while wagging a single finger.  While on the slide coming down she said, “a couple more!”

Jacob, as usual, cleaned up at the adult Easter Egg hunt.  He was really willing to hunt in the bushes where as I stuck to the grass and tall hiding places.  Anna loves hunting for eggs, especially when there is something in them.  She was a great help emptying my eggs of the coins and clicking the eggs back together for me.  But her favorite part about Easter Sunday was dying eggs.  We got the dye pots out and I gave Anna a crayon to make designs on the eggs.

I asked her to pick out the eggs and the colors but insisted on doing the dipping myself.  She was okay with that until she saw the first egg come out a different color than white from the vats.  After that, she wanted to help so much.  She sneakily plopped the eggs herself and even went to grab them when she thought they were done.  Grandma was standing by with cleaning supplies but Anna was great and surprisingly controlled, she only needed a paper towel to dry her hands every now and then.

She mostly stuck to matching the color of the already dyed egg to the vat and just intensified its color, but the few times she mixed it up turned out beautiful.  The three days (at least) following that day she was still asking to color eggs again.  Oh it was so much fun!

Nina and Papa took us to the Riverwalk.  Anna got some skinned knees because she was wearing a skirt in the spring weather.  But swinging between the grandparents and shoulder rides from Daddy made it a little better.  Then a trip to the mall ended with a carousel ride, just Anna and Daddy and a pony that went up and down.  She looked like she was falling asleep as she was going round and round but perked up when Jacob asked if she was having fun, “oh, YEAH!”