Happy Easter?

My daughter had been talking about and planning for Easter for months. She wanted to get the Easter stuff out back in February and I said not at least until March. So a few weeks ago we went through our stash to see what we needed—just a few more plastic eggs and my girl just ‘had’ to get bunny ears. It is strange, though, preparing for a holiday right now. From the small things like not being able to shop alone to the big things like thinking about all those 20,000+ families that have lost someone. Even as I was blowing up a swimming tube a friend sent and taking my deep breath I thought about all of the people fighting just to breathe. Such a contradiction to celebrate for me. Thankfully the kids have been mostly shielded from what is happening. I don’t watch the news around them. I’ve simply explained there is a bad virus and things are closed to keep people safe.

Our Easter has been ‘interesting’ to say the least. I’m not a fan of messy things like glue and glitter. Well, I’ll now add egg dye to the mix. I’ve found other ways to decorate in years past but this year I thought they might be old enough to try the old school dyeing like I did growing up.
I’m a complete rookie w this. It’s been so long since I did it that I forgot you needed vinegar. Also, we only had brown eggs! I had to get a few other things from store so we went and due to the crisis, and probably Easter—no vinegar. I figured we could improvise since I wasn’t about to go to another store and we got some ‘rice vinegar’? I also researched you can use brown so we tried it.

I only boiled one dozen initially—rookie mistake. Some explode and can’t use. Some get eaten and you end up with just 4. So, I boiled another dozen.

I thought I was being proactive by putting paper towels on our dining table. Rookie mistake. Mixing the tablet/water went well...even dyeing them went ok. After we finished my girl wanted to pour the colors together to see what they would do. See where this is going? I walked in the kitchen with the words ‘please don’t let it spill’ barely out of my mouth when I hear ‘Oh no!’and my girl runs around the corner looking panicked. Yup, one cup spilled all over the table—green. I hurried and got some paper towel but it wasn’t fast enough and it started soaking in the table! As I was cleaning the table, chair, and floor I just couldn’t hold it in and hollered ‘see, this is why I don’t like dyeing eggs’...
My son then disappears and shows up with a brown paper bag. He says, ‘here you go, breathe into that. You look frustrated’. And you know what, I did use it! It’s a bit funny because that is his new thing—when I seem upset or frustrated he brings me a brown paper bag.

Then, sometime between dyeing and drying the eggs I was walking into the kitchen with my relatively new I phone and it slipped out of my hands, tumbling to the floor....I now have a nice long crack in the screen. Sigh.

After the eggs finally dried we started to decorate. We wanted to use the ‘shrink wrap’ paper so I used some really warm tap water and it didn’t work. Rookie mistake. You need almost boiling water for them to shrink on the egg. But, once we put them in the boiling water the dye started to boil off! Sigh....

However after all that hullaballoo, we ended up with 11 mostly decorated eggs.

Today the kids woke up around 7am and were SO excited!! They dug into their baskets and started eating and playing. Something I thought was pretty great was that since we couldn’t have our neighborhood Easter party the bunny still came to each house at night and brought some candy-filled eggs.
It was a great idea—in theory. After the kids ran outside, collected the eggs, and brought them in I happened to look in their baskets. I saw something move...so I looked closer and saw ANTS! Agh! They were everywhere!! All over the eggs and now baskets!
So, I spent the next 20 minutes spraying bugs and cleaning up dead ants.
Never mind that when we went out the first time to look for the eggs AND when I threw them all back outside the second time a neighbor was out each time and saw me in only tshirt.

Then, sugar doesn’t mix well with my girl. Limited is ok, but after a certain amount, she gets pretty moody. So, after eating robin eggs, peeps, and a few little donuts, we spent the next hour battling a few fussy episodes. For example, she was fit to be tied when I told her she couldn’t play with her brother’s new blocks. She wanted to play with them and not allow him to, even though he hadn’t opened them yet.

We’ve now had lunch (egg salad of course), they’ve had a rest time, and things have calmed down.
It was quite an eventful holiday here, to say the least.

Hope you had a Happy Easter!

Ps Sunflower thanks again for your comments and words of encouragement, I read all of them and I appreciate you taking time to comment. Hope your Easter was good!