Easter Weekend: Egg Hunt, Egg Dying, and A Lot of Egg Smashing

Easter weekend flew by at house with chaos in the air. My best friend, Britta, came to visit my family over weekend and brought along her two daughters, one of which is JP's age, and other will be 2 in July. It was a busy weekend around here!

She and the girls were going to meet up with us in the morning for an Easter egg hunt, but they had a delay and weren't able to leave on time. Perry and I took our kids to the Linda Vista Golf Course for their egg hunt and met up with Kile and Chris and the boys. I can't even exaggerate. I was the first one there. The parking lot was empty and we were *only* 50 minutes early. But in my defense, every other hunt we've been to you HAD to be there early to get parking, and then plan for walking...

 We played Twenty Questions in the car while we waited and then went into the club house for a little bit. Charlotte's hunt was supposed to start at 10:00 so around 9:45, we went outside to get her, Casey, and Dylan lined up. Much to my dismay, when we came around the corner, it had already started!! Robin was holding Charlotte and I had her run Charlotte over an untouched area so she could have a little bit of a chance to grab a few eggs.

 Little Dylan managed to get a couple too. I'm not sure how Casey faired, but I was a little annoyed the hunt was over by 9:51. There were still people in the parking lot with kids coming over that missed out. We decided it was probably one or two kids who crossed the start line and the parents didn't stop them, so everyone started. 

 I wanted to get a nice picture of the kids together, but JP was mad and cold, and Hunter was just tired of waiting. 

The older kids' hunt was on hole 1 of the golf course. Most of the kids lined up on the far left so we brought Hunter and JP down to the far right edge of the course. Perry gave them a little pep talk and we lay out a good plan for them.

When they said go, Hunter and JP took off running towards where we told them, but veered the wrong way and got caught up in the crowd of kids.

 There wasn't a ton of kids there, but because they were behind the pack, they weren't able to pick up very many. JP snagged 9 eggs, and Hunter came away with 2 eggs, and couple range balls. Those tricky yellow balls...

 By the time we made it back to the club house, we had two VERY disappointed kids on our hands. JP was carried back :(

 I helped crack open eggs as JP's hands were too cold. So were mine... we made it up to the kids by swinging by the store and letting them pick out their own treat. We spent the rest of the morning tidying up the house before Britta and the girls arrived.

That afternoon Perry, Chris and my dad went golfing together while Kile, Robin, my mom, and I hung at my house while Britta threw us an Arbonne party with facials. Yay! The kids were supposed to be napping but that didn't happen. They were all over the place! After we cleaned up the party, we all dyed eggs.

 This picture just cracks me up. The two of them together remind me of monkeys!

I think Casey enjoyed himself, but Dylan had just woke up from a nap and just watched everyone else with Nanny.

 I would love to tell you that JP had multiple colored eggs in his egg carton, but even that yellow one was turned to green by the time he was done. #obsessed

Casey and Charli both worked really hard to get their stickers on the eggs. It was adorable to watch their determination! 

 Charlotte had too much fun dunking eggs into all the colors. Who needs a spoon to get them out? #overrated

 After church on Sunday, we went to Nanny and Papa's house for dinner, and and Easter egg hunt. Hunter and JP pretty much picked up all the eggs before the little ones had a chance. They were supposed to let the young kids have a head start but that didn't happen. 

 I was going to hide them all again but it was pretty chilly out, and I'm kind of a big baby when I'm cold. 

 We even managed to get a family picture taken for my mom. Of course its the oldest kids that are grumpy and can't look at the camera...

Hunter and Rylee adored each other. The entire time she was at our house, they called each other their boyfriend/girlfriend. They held hands throughout church and drew pictures of them holding hands. They were cute. Both have tons of energy so they wore each other out. And on a side note, I'm in love with that one curl on Hunter's forehead! <3 it="" p="" perfect="" ringlet="" s="" the="">

Easter Egg Hunt in East Missoula

We took Hunter and JP to an egg hunt last year and they had so much fun! Perry and I enjoyed watching/helping them. Since we didn't have any plans to go out of town for the holiday weekend, we took the boys to the egg hunt in East Missoula. I'll embarrassingly admit that we took them to the fairgrounds first though. I read, and heard from various people, that they usually have good one. When we showed up, the place was dead. Because it happened TWO years ago...

 Luckily we found that out before this egg hunt started. As far as I know, Missoula had one at the University and this one in East Missoula. How many people does Hunter know? Maybe 15? 20? What are the chances that he finds someone HE knows before mom or dad do? Odds are pretty low, but it happened. For how friendly Hunter is, he sure was shy when I told him to go over and say "Hello." He instead just stood alarmingly close to his preschool friend until he turned around. 

 Again, due to the age groups they had designated, Hunter and JP were supposed to be in different groups, but we wanted to watch both, so since Hunter's friend was in the 3-4 year old group, we figured Hunter could too. 

 Charlotte kept it together nicely even though she didn't nap when I thought she was, and was hungry. Go mom for leaving her bottle AT HOME. 

 Here's JP before the race. He didn't want a picture with his green bucket but I snapped one anyways. Hunter just didn't want a picture at all. (I probably embarrass him now...)

 Hunter surprised me again once the race started. I told both of the boys when it's time to go, to run out there and start scooping up eggs. Hunter *literally* walked around at a snails pace, like he had all the time in the world. 

 JP on the other hand took off running and gather up eggs very quickly, and was not picky about the color this year. 

 This picture makes me laugh for so many reasons! JP was so proud of his loot. On his way back across the field, he walked SO slow because he had eggs falling out of his bucket.

 Hunter didn't have that problem, or even close to it. All the eggs in front of him were all the eggs he collected.

 JP on the other hand...

Hunter received mostly coupons from all of his 10 eggs, and JP picked up mostly eggs with candy in them. Completely the opposite last year. Needless to say, Hunter was very disappointed and JP was bouncing with excitement. But not a second after I took this picture, we combined buckets so it was fair. 

Dying Easter Eggs

Where do I begin? I haven't logged on here for TEN days and I'm feeling REALLY behind! Pardon my delay in relaying to you the adventures in our world....

As you probably saw, Charlotte was *exhausted* to say the least after a night of dying eggs. 

 After covering the counter in old towels, and setting up all the dye bowls, we were ready to start and the boys could hardly control their excitement. 

I've never done it this way before, but thought we should give it a try. Spray shaving cream in a shallow pan and drop food dye in random spots, then swirl with a tooth pick and roll the eggs in it. They are supposed to come out tie-dyed after sitting for 10-15 minutes. 

Ours didn't turn out quite as bold as I was hoping for, but I think if we would have used more dye it would have worked better. Regardless, this was even fun for dad!

 Not one of my best moments, but I thought little Kiki would like to have some fun too. 

 She did. 

And then I remember a few seconds too late what babies do....put stuff in their mouth......

 For the rest of the night, she hung out in the sink while we finished dying and decorating eggs. She LOVED it.

It didn't take her long to figure out how to drink the water either. Startled her every time. Goofy girl!

 Meanwhile, the boys stayed busy plopping eggs into cups. Surprisingly JP opted for colors OTHER THAN GREEN! 

 One of the few "mommy and her boys" pictures. :)

 Here's how a few of our eggs turned out. I love them all!

 Perry had the *brilliant* idea of putting a band-aide on this green guy. The darn thing was dropped at least 3 times and was on the verge of falling completely apart. Because JP is a green fanatic, you cannot throw a green egg out...

 I'm pretty sure this egg took a solid 5 minutes to decorate. He was SO proud of his multi-eyed monster!

 These are the shaving cream eggs after Perry rinsed them off. I'm loving Charli's red/pink eggs.

Hunter put stickers on a couple eggs and then decided to forgo the stickers and free hand paint faces on his eggs. The yellow/white looking egg in the top row was the only one that scored two eyes. And it looked creepy as ****.

Clean up was fun.... just kidding, I was busy watching Charlotte sleep sitting up.