Easter Festivities (long post!)

Easter was really fun this year since Bella is old enough to enjoy everything. Even though it's fun doing eggs, and candy, and the Easter bunny, we also enjoyed celebrating the true meaning of Easter, and having it be conference weekend made it even better. We had been teaching Bella all month what Easter is about and it was fun to see that she got it and remembered. She would say, "Jesus died and was resurrected." Or sometimes it would be, "Jesus died, and woke up after 3 days." Cute. Glad to know certain things stick, especially things like this.

Here are a few things we did leading up to Easter and Easter morning:

Dyed eggs w/some friends outside

The babies there. I promise I really do put pants on my kids, he had just exploded out, hence the no pants and extra chunky thighs!

Bella has a lot of boy friends and she fits right in. She had a dirty face from oreos and then she is like, "Hey Joseph, smell my dirty foot." And he is like "Ok! I'm a boy and I do gross things like that."

Then my other friend and I got together with a few other moms and had an Easter egg hunt at the park.

She would go pick up like 4 eggs at a time and then put them in her bucket

The crew

Gaines chillin w/his lady Lily while watching everyone else collect eggs

We then went to the Peoria Sports Complex Saturday for all the Easter festivities. They pretty much had everything to do. Here is Bella getting ready to get some eggs.

Dave got to come which was great!

They had the Easter bunny and you could get a picture w/him after the hunt, but the closer we got the more scared Bella became. She is afraid of all the big dressed up animals. But, then again what isn't she afraid of??! We made progress with jumping castles, since she is afraid of those also, and she actually got on one for about 20 seconds, did about 6 jumps, and then was done and off! Hey, baby steps, baby steps!
There was a petting zoo which was the highlight of the whole thing for Bella since she loves animals. She reminded me of that Dr. Suess book "Are you my Mother?" by the way she would go up to the animals and get right in their face.

Are you my mother?

Are you my mother?

Are you my mother?

Are you my mother?

Oh here's my mother!

Then the Easter bunny did visit our house that night and the proof was in the eaten carrots she left outside her door. He also left a trail of eggs to her basket and he hid eggs all over the family room and play room. She enjoyed it and also has been enjoying her basket the past few days. Everything in it was different craft type stuff. Finger paints, bubbles, model magic playdoe like stuff (I like this 10x better than playdoe), drawing pads, beads to make jewelry, etc. I actually got this basket at a silent auction I went to and was so excited to get it since I knew we could just make it her Easter basket.

Looking for her eggs

Here are a few things we've done so far from thing in her basket..

Finger painting. This used to be my favorite thing to do when I was little in preschool or kindergarten and now my little girl is doing it. Crazy!

Here's what we made (Bella would tell me what to make and then I'd make it and then she'd play with it). This is that model magic stuff. Way better than playdo b/c doesn't make a mess, then dries and you can color on it. We will definitely be buying some more.

And our sock bunnies. Don't laugh, I know they aren't the best, we tried :) We made them out of Bella's socks. Fun to do though.
And we also made some bracelets and a necklace.
Overall, great week. We have ham and rolls coming out our ears though. I don't think I'll be eating ham for awhile after this week!!