I'm kind of ambivalent about how to celebrate Easter seeing as we're not particularly religious and I don't even know the story behind the egg-layin' Easter bunny that a secular Easter seems to embrace. (Every year I say I'll look it up; has yet to happen so if anyone knows, I'd be obliged....) This year I decided to at least attempt to tell the kids the original Easter story (the child's version w/o the terrifying parts, of course), so they'd have some sense of it. Teia was having trouble saying "Jesus" so she changed his name to George and then asked me if "George" and the Easter bunny knew each other. I don't think I did such a good job. Maybe I'll let Greg give it a shot next year.
Regardless of the meaning of the holiday, the kids were excited, Teia in particular. She was peering out the door for days before thinking she spotted an Easter egg. Usually it was just a leaf or an orange peel. When Easter morning finally arrived she was up early and spying eggs in the backyard. We were pretty groggy, having laid all those plastic eggs at 5 am. It was torture for her to wait for her brother to wake up and as soon as he was up she was out there and had about 7 eggs in her bucket before we even noticed she was outside. She's ninja like that when it comes to Easter eggs. We pretty much had to hold her down so Kai could catch up. If there was an Olympics for Easter egg hunts, Teia would be national team, if not gold medal-quality I'm sure. Kai went about his hunt in his usual thoughtful way, more of a tortoise than a hare. He really enjoyed it but wanted to open each egg to see what was inside before moving on for more. We had to prod him along lest he only end up with three to his sister's 30.
Post-hunt they examined their spoils with eggs and wrappers all over the floor. Then we moved on to the in-house hunt. Growing up, I don't remember an egg hunt outside but I do remember our indoor hunts where my parents always left crafty notes that we had to decipher to find out where our Easter chocolate was hiding. We loved these hunts, long after we learned to recognize our parents' writing and knew there was no Easter bunny. We do something similar for the kidlets.
Bunnies across the wall and ceiling led them to the secret hiding places for their Easter baskets.
I admit, even the hiding place was inspired by one of my childhood hunts.
The rest of the morning was pretty exciting for Teia while Daddy built her "jungle bed." We became the unexpected owners of a full size bed from some friends over the weekend. This was perfect b/c Teia had been sleeping on the floor on a mattress for the past few months. She's pretty happy with her new bed, complete with its jungle canopy (pics to come).
After lunch we took a ride on the ferry over to Coronado island. Kai is a ferry man these days and the smile tells the story. He enjoyed himself :-)
Once over on Coronado we rented a 4 person bike where Greg and I got competitive and made sure we overtook every other family out there riding. We didn't have much choice; Teia was steadily mushing us from her perch at the front.
And here's our girl in a lovely Easter dress that was perfect for the occasion. We're alot more into dresses these days.
At the end of the day Greg showed me a note that Teia had dictated to him and placed in the mailbox, thanking the Easter bunny for a dress (different one) that was in her Easter basket.
I'm sure the Easter bunny, wherever s/he is, appreciated the note. Kai told us the bunny goes back to his cage post-egg layin'. That's probably a good place for a giant, egg-layin' bunny to hide out. Oh, and the kids said they weren't scared of the wascally wabbit. But they did sleep with their doors closed the night before Easter and have kept them open every night before and every night since. I don't think they fancied the idea of a large rodent peeking on them while they were sleeping.
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