Easter Egg Hunt

Today we took advantage of the beautiful weather and had our Easter egg hunt in the backyard! Can anyone remember the last time we had 28 C weather at the beginning of April? The boys went down for their nap, and James and I waited until the last possible moment to dash around the yard and hide the little chocolate eggs. I know it's a strange time for an egg hunt, but the boys are young enough not to really get the whole Easter Bunny anyway, let alone realize that he comes on Sunday morning for the rest of the world. My family, including my Nana, came up this afternoon for Easter dinner, and I thought Nana and my sister Jennifer would love to see the boys dash around in search of chocolate. It was so much fun. It was hilarious to watch the boys trying to find the eggs, since they don't really have the skill of looking for details down yet. often they would be staring right at an egg and not see it! At one point, I was trying to direct Caleb to an egg at the base of a tree, without pointing directly to it. I told Caleb to "look at the tree" and he looked at the trunk about a foot off the ground. So I told him to look at his shoes, and he literally looked only at his shoes. Then I said look at the ground and he looked at the ground between his shoes and the tree. (I ended up having to point at the eggs.)

So there were James and I and Jennifer and her fiance Derek all running around the backyard with the boys, trying to search out all the eggs. (As James and I were hiding the last few eggs, I suddenly asked "should we have counted them to make sure the boys find them all?!") There was only one little netting of eggs, and we think we got them all (or some animal is going to get sick if it finds a stray egg!) Even after only being hidden for 30 minutes or so, many of the eggs were softening from the sun.

I was amazed to see how well the boy like to cooperate and share, and that they both have a good sense of fairness. I had hidden a string of eggs among the rock border of the garden, so that every 5 or 6 rocks there was an egg. When they got the idea that there were more than a few eggs hidden along the border, Colin grabbed one, and then stood back to allow Caleb to grab the next. They each took their turn and then dutifully stood aside for their brother. I was so pleased to see how they enjoyed helping each other, and how every egg they found was a delightful surprise for them. James questioned that I had only bought the one bag (they still had about 15 eggs each). Initially I simply hadn't wanted a huge stash of chocolate around for them (and us). But I also realized after the hunt that if there is a large amount to search for, the fun is lost after a while and boredom can easily set in at this age. Really, 15 was the perfect amount. They had just enough fun searching and then were ready and wanting to indulge in a few eggs when all were found.

It was such a lovely afternoon. We spent the entire day outside, and I had to tear myself away from lounging on the deck with everyone in order to get dinner on. It was the type of day one wants to barbecue, not prepare a roast dinner. But the food was lovely, and because we took advantage of cooking the turkey the day before, we didn't have to do a ton of cooking. The day was capped off with a Skype-visit from my parents in Australia. All in all, a wonderful, beautiful holiday, full of family, food and fun.