Easter Weekend

Our Easter weekend was packed to the brim and I still feel like I'm catching up on my rest. We were able to spend some time with both sides of the family which was reall nice. I worked the Thursday/Friday leading up to Easter and so Isla took a trip up to Bellingham to spend a night with her grandparents until I arrived with my brother on Friday after work. Graham joined us late Friday after working and leading our church's Good Friday service so we were all able to spend one night together. As much as I don't love all the things Easter has come to represent for most people (bunnies, chocolate, egg hunts etc), I still thought it'd be fun to let Isla go on her first egg hunt. Needless to say, she LOVED it and now I'm left wondering if I should do egg hunts throughout the year, just for entertainment purposes. Here are a few of my favorite shots (by the way, it is impossible to get Isla to look at the camera and smile--I took at least 100 pictures that document that fact):

 It wasn't until later that Isla realized that there was something INSIDE the egg. My dad said that it was the most anticlimactic egg hunt ever once he saw the "treats" in Isla's eggs which prompted me to ask my mom whether she let us hunt candy-filled eggs at the age of 1 1/2. I was relieved to hear that we only hunted hard boiled eggs until we were older and that I'm not some crazy dietitian mother. Or something like that. :) 

 Enjoying the egg "fillings" (graham crackers, goldfish, Cheerios, Wheat Chex and mandarin orange slices). The mandarin orange slices were inhaled in seconds. See Dad, she could care less! :)

 At one point, Isla's baskets (she needed Gideon's basket to complete the job) got so full that I had to off load some eggs into a bowl and set them on the porch. We were trying to point Isla in the direction of the hiding place for the final egg when she spotted the filled bowl. You should have seen her face! It was like she'd totally hit the jackpot! She was SOO proud of herself for finding that many eggs in one place. 

 The rest of our time in Bellingham was filled with eating, studying (for Graham), Ben's baseball game in the glorious SUNSHINE for the rest of us (I got my first sunburn of 2011!!), a Farmer's Market and more eating. We headed back home on Saturday night in preparation for early church responsibilities on Sunday AM. To be continued...