Easter!

Diligently weeding the garden to put some snap peas in the ground

I remember always loving Easter weekend as a kid... and as a young adult, for that matter.  Four whole days off, nice spring weather, Easter treats, egg hunts, family dinners and gatherings - who could ask for more? Now that we have kids, it should be even more awesome. But I have to say, the last few have been a little rough.  A couple of nasty, nasty stomach bugs two Easters in a row, my grandmother's funeral two years ago, and that scary easter egg hunt we stumbled upon accidentally last year. Also,  now that we are in the States, it is barely a holiday at all.  There are no work days off, so we just squeeze it all into a normal weekend.

Nature drawings

This year, however, we were set for a pretty good one. No one was particularly sick, the Easter bunny was on top of things, we knew how to avoid the trample-fest "egg hunt", it was gorgeous and sunny, and there were loads of fun activities going on throughout the weekend to keep everyone entertained. And really, for the most part, it was successful. 

At Daffodil Days in Spohr Gardens.  Linden is clearly unimpressed with the quality of the face painting

I, however, inadvertently managed to sabotage all the goodness a number of times. Cases in point:

1. On Saturday I dropped my iphone in the toilet. It is currently in the process of drying out, but we don't have high hopes.  Plus I had to fish around in the toilet to retrieve it.  Bad start to the weekend.

2. I went completely bonkers on the Cadbury Mini Eggs.  I don't have many food weaknesses, but for whatever strange reason, Cadbury Mini Eggs is one of them.  I ate way, way, way too many, and then I ate some more.  And for a gal who doesn't consume a whole lot of refined sugar on a daily basis, my body did NOT appreciate it. Ergo, I felt like a sick, gluttonous wreck the whole weekend.  Then I ate more mini eggs.

3. We decided to try Linden out in his new "big-boy" bed:

Taken in a very dark, dark room - luckily the flash didn't wake him

Everything started out well.  Juniper was so excited about it all that she requested to sleep in the other bed that is in that room. After some intervention, both kids fell asleep.  Miraculous! Clark and I tasted a glimpse of what it might be like to have our own bedroom, all to ourselves. Then we celebrated by going downstairs and staying up too late watching Jurassic Park 2.  That was when things started to unravel.  As karmic punishment for watching such a terrible, terrible movie, we were woken up at midnight by a thump and some crying.  Of course, Linden had fallen out of bed. Everyone woke up, it got dealt with, we all went back to sleep. A very short time later, we heard crying, and a little voice saying "mama, mama - I sneezed, and I have snot all over my hands!" That would be Linden again (at the peak of a mucousy cold). The snot scenario repeated ad nauseum throughout the night, peppered by another couple of bed falling incidents, and then was rounded off nicely by Juniper getting up shortly before 6am and wanting to go see if the Easter bunny had come.  We were NOT in good shape.  As in, the whole lot of us. It was grumps-ville around here for a good portion of the morning (Clark and I may have threatened to cancel Easter entirely if Juniper did not go stay quietly in her bed until 7am).  But, we rallied, ate breakfast, did the easter baskets and egg hunts, and even managed to get ourselves out the door for a nice long bike ride to the beach, and then into the village. So - a pretty decent Easter all said and told.

Examining some treasure

Post egg-hunt 

The post-script to that whole fiasco is that Linden opted to go back in his crib last night. And we convinced Juniper that we would have to work our way up to them sharing a room a little bit more slowly.  But we'll get there eventually! Clark will fashion a rail to hopefully keep Linden from falling out, the colds will eventually disappear, and then perhaps we'll have the kids sharing a room in the not-too-distant future.  Fingers crossed!

Action shot: mid-roll down the hill.  That is a half-eaten cheese stick peeking out of Linden's back pocket  

 So today, it is back to life as usual.  Except for a few things.  First off, I am nipping that mini-egg sugar addiction in the bud, and cutting myself off cold turkey. This will be especially difficult, as all stores will likely be selling mini eggs at a post-Easter reduced price, and I have some of my father's sale genes in me. I may not be super fun to hang around for a couple of days, but hopefully the detox will leave me of much sounder mind and body.  I will pair that with daily yoga - you can hold me to that.  Secondly, for whatever reason, the school kids have ANOTHER entire week of school this week for "spring break". Seriously?  They just got "February break" a very short time ago.  How many weeks do kids need to take off in a year?  Anyway, the long and short of it is that Juniper will be home all week.  So that's actually quite a change in the schedule, and will result in not a huge amount of productivity from a work-related perspective on my end of things.  But on the bright side, we should have some fun girl time, and maybe some good playdates with some friends in the same situation. Plus, I have no plans to go spend gobs of money at the dentist this week, so really, things are looking up.

I will leave you with a little video. We will often have a moment of appreciation at the dinner table, if someone thinks of it. If we can, we all hold hands (although the table in this house is GARGANTUAN, and often we are not physically able to actually hold hands), and then either
a) we all take turns saying what made us happy about the day, and how we are thankful to all be eating a nice meal together, and then tell everyone in turn that we love them, or
b) we say this little blessing, given to us by our friend Tawnya before we moved away from Halifax. Here is Linden saying it all by himself.

See you next week!