Easter.

Easter is one of those holidays that I enjoyed as a child. A small child, like elementary school. As I got older is was one of those holidays that fell by the wayside as the nostalgia for dyed eggs and hunting for them wore off. Now that I am older and have a family of my own this holiday has made it's way back onto the list of ones we celebrate. We hadn't really done the Easter thing till last year.

This year, Mason being three I felt it was time to try dyed eggs. Mason couldn't wait for the day to arrive. I had found a neat technique on this website for dying eggs and wanted to give it a try. It seemed simple enough. So Saturday we got the supplies together and sat down to dye our eggs. However it turned out to be more of a pain than she let on. It was extremely difficult to peel the punched images from the freezer paper. With an impatient three year old the process seemed to take years. Our end result was not as great as the author of the Lolly Chops blog. I guess I didn't press down the images hard enough because on some the dye bled, leaving the images not as sharp, but altogether not bad. Besides he's three. He's not expecting the Mona Lisa or anything.

and here is a close up of a few that came out more distinct because of the dark color.

Easter morning could not have arrived fast enough. Mason having begged if the eggs are ready since we dyed them. And anyone who is a parent of a toddler knows how incessantly they ask about things and how quickly that becomes the most annoying thing. My parents and sister arrived early to watch him search for eggs.

He had a blast. We hid plastic eggs from last year around the house which he instantly found a few as soon as he woke up. However the egg hunt outside with the real eggs was the best. That silly Easter Bunny kept hiding eggs in the dirt. If I haven't mentioned this before, Mason has never liked to get dirty since he was a baby. He's improved much since then but still some things just aren't meant to get dirty. Silly Easter Bunny!

He was happy to see Bertie Bus in his basket as he had just mentioned the day before that he wanted this particular Thomas the Tank Engine character. (Shhh, don't tell him but it was from the stash of trains I bought a year ago during a 50% of sale at A.C. Moore. We'll just let him think the Easter Bunny is that good).

The rest of the day was spent hanging out. We enjoyed tasty Chicken Parmesan Bundles, courtesy of Kraft Foods, with green beans and mashed potatoes. It was really simple to make and I even used my brand new micro cooker from Pampered Chef (thank you to my MIL). Never ones to waste a beautiful day we even broke out the Bounce House (thank you very much to our neighbors who so graciously offered it to us for free when they moved) to give it a trial run.

We might have had just a little bit of fun. Mason jumped in it till his face turned bright red, huffing and puffing and probably on the verge of passing out. I call him my Energizer Bunny. He keeps going and going.....

I'm highly anticipating next year when Sophie can join in on all the fun. In the words of The Fresh Beats, What a great day!