Easter 2018

The Easter bunny was at Fred Meyer the weekend before Easter. This is the same group that takes pictures with Santa at Christmas time and charges only $10 for digital copies of all the pictures they take. I hear it's actually the same guy in both the bunny suit and the Santa suit. I really like that it's so reasonably priced and that there's been no line both times we've gone.

Allison was a bit timid at first. Oscar told her to give the bunny a hug, which she did as fast as she could before running right back to daddy. It was too quick for them to get a picture of it. Tyler gave him a longer hug, which made Allison feel comfortable enough to sit next to him for awhile. Once she was there, she didn't want to leave.

No one else was in line, so we let her stay there with him for a good 10 minutes until I had to drag her away when someone else wanted a picture. The crew thought it was so cute that they all got a picture with her too.

The day before Easter we took the kids out to an awesome egg hunt at Bob's Corn and Pumpkin Farm. They had multiple hunts for varying ages (0-2, 3-4, etc), so the big kids didn't take all the eggs from the little ones. Tyler wasn't supposed to hunt during Allison's hunt, but it was too crowded for me to feel comfortable leaving him alone while I hunted with her, so they both ended up doing both hunts. 

I asked Oscar to come along because I knew a free egg hunt would be crazy crowded. I was much more comfortable having one adult responsible for each kid, and with two cars, he could take the kids home while I drove down to my delivery job. Unfortunately I ended up getting the Prius stuck in the muddy parking lot. Oscar did his best to use our Mazda to pull out the Prius while I took the kids to their hunts. We dropped their baskets off when the hunts were over, and were disappointed to see that our rope wasn't strong enough to pull the car out onto dry ground. Fortunately we'd parked near someone with a jeep and a winch who kindly offered to help us get it out. The kids were completely melting down at that point, so I took them back over to the farm to enjoy the rest of the activities. After planning on having two adults, it ended up just being me chasing two kids in different directions in a super crowded area, which was HARD to say the least. At least they cheered up quickly and had tons of fun.

While they were off having fun, Oscar spent the entire time in the parking lot.The guy with the winch was concerned that we were too close to the car next to us and that the winch would cause our car to hit their's as it was loaded up. Another driver with a truck and a chain offered to pull us out instead, and that did the trick. I wasn't the only one to get stuck either. He and Oscar also helped out with 9 other cars and would have helped more if I hadn't had to leave to go to work (90 minutes later than I'd originally planned on). I knew I was stuck before I left the car, but most of the other people didn't and were simply trying to leave the event only to be unable to move their cars. Even this big truck couldn't drive through that mud. Look at its wheels! The lot was just too muddy, there weren't any signs saying not to park in any particular areas, and I, at least, couldn't see the man directing traffic anymore so I assumed from that point we could just park in any available space. As we were leaving we saw they were bringing out tractors to help move the other stuck cars.

In addition to the egg hunt there were slides, bounce houses, coloring, crafts, and carnival games. The kids could have stayed all day, but I had to drag them away for the last half hour so that I could go to work.

I would have liked to get more pictures of the fun carnival games, but it was hard to do while trying to keep two kids from running off in different directions. I got to take a few once the kids found activities they really liked that were close to each other. Allison could have stayed all day playing with the ducks in the wading pool.

Ty was more into coloring. I took Allison over to the coloring table to play with the do a dots, but she lost interest quickly and went back to the pool.

Oscar texted at this point to say they'd successfully moved the car but that he wanted to help out with the others and wouldn't be joining us. I then took the kids over to the bounce houses where the lines weren't nearly as bad as I was expecting for how crowded it was. The kids didn't have much of a wait and were able to bounce as long as they wanted to. The main events with lines were meeting the easter bunny and riding the cow train, so we opted out of those. There was no way I was waiting in long lines alone with both kids, and they'd already met the Easter bunny the previous Saturday.

 Allison stayed in this bounce house, going up and saying hi to people that stood near the side.

 Ty was more interested in the one across from it that had a slide. 

It was a much more eventful day than I'd originally planned on, but we still had plenty of fun and made some great memories. We'll be back, but we'll be much more cautious in the parking lot and we'll arrive much earlier. We arrived at 10:07, but we didn't get parked until 10:50. The traffic within a mile of the farm was what really slowed us down. They open the festivities at 10am and open the parking lot at 9:15am, so next time we'll get there super early and just let the kids play on their playground until it officially opens at 10. 

Easter Day was wonderful. We didn't do Easter eggs and baskets right in the morning since we'd both been way too tired to make eggs and hide them the night before. After that crazy day on the farm I worked until after 6 then met up with the family at the grocery store so we could shop for Easter dinner. By the time we got back, fed the kids, and got them to bed, I had no energy to work on the eggs. We decided since the kids are young and have zero expectations of what to expect when, we'd just tell them the Easter bunny hadn't come yet but would get there later.

It was also general conference that day, and the kids gave me excellent cuddles while I watched the first 30 minutes of it. After the first session was over Oscar took the kids upstairs and I prepared the eggs for their first egg hunt.

For the past year or so we've had the idea to prank the kids with vegetables in their eggs instead of candy. We couldn't resist doing it this year when Easter also fell on April Fool's Day. Our kids are too sweet, young, and innocent to be tricked by it, but it was still adorable. My favorite part was when Tyler excitedly said "I got a brussel sprout!"

It turns out that the kids simply believed that sometimes Easter Bunnies leave vegetables. And because they were inside eggs, they ate them! Even Allison, my picky girl, ate some carrot, green beans, and radish.

Cute videos of the kids doing their first hunt and opening their eggs can be watched here and here. Unfortunately they won't upload properly to the blog.

After that we had the Easter bunny (AKA Oscar) call the kids on the home phone and tell them if they ate up all their veggies then he would make another hunt for them with candy in their eggs. They LOVED getting to talk to the Easter bunny and telling him how they'd eaten their vegetables. I think this may become an annual tradition!

We waited until after Allison's nap and after the final session of conference before doing the candy hunt. This time we let them watch a cartoon while I hid the eggs and baskets upstairs. We had to stop Tyler from taking all the ones in sight, particularly on the stairs, so that Allison could get some too. Video of the hunt can be found here. In addition to treats in their eggs we got the kids each a basket full mostlyof  toys and a few more treats (bigger ones that wouldn't fit in an egg, like a Reester bunny).

I had to tear Tyler away from going through Allison's basket so that he could search for his under his bed. He was very happy with it.

Later the kids helped daddy make Loaves of fishes for Easter dinner. We were having both sets of missionaries over that evening. Oscar also attempted resurrection bread, but it disappeared too much. He was much more successful with the chocolate peep bread.

We held an egg hunt for the missionaries too since we'd bought way too much candy. It was 50% off the weekend we were meeting the Easter bunny, and I'd already bought some the previous week. I totally forgot to take pics while they were here with us. Oh well! It was a great Easter and I love the new traditions we made. I let the kids eat all the candy they wanted to that day then put the rest away still in their eggs. I let them have 2 eggs a day, which works out really nicely whenever they ask for treats. They get a little surprise each time, and it's great portion control for them.