Easter 2012

This year, as in 2007, Easter was on Dave's birthday.  So it was a particularly special day for our family.  Eddie was 2 years, 7 months, 3 weeks, and 5 days old on Easter this year.

Dave's parents were in town for the weekend, to see Zennie (they missed her party two weeks ago) and to celebrate Dave's birthday and Easter with us.  We got to eat Chipotle burritos with them on Friday night and then they treated us to IHOP breakfast the next morning.  It was a great breakfast, although I did have to be "in charge" of Eddie the whole time.  Dave sprained his ankle the day before and wasn't able to entertain Eddie outside on the grass before our food came.  But overall, Eddie was a really good boy during the meal, even if he did spend a good deal of time crawling from one side of the booth to the other: parents vs. grandparents.

I brought his red potty with us to the restaurant and just put it in the bathroom when we arrived.  Eddie is scared of the "loud toilets" at restaurants so I knew there was no way he'd be able to go potty otherwise.  After we ate our food and were playing outside, I could tell he needed to poop, so I took him inside the bathroom.  Like always, it takes some convincing to sit down on the potty, but he did...and then he asked me to stand outside the stall.  He pooped in his little potty like a BIG BOY!  And of course, I  had to take a picture to commemorate his big achievement.

On Saturday evening we attended Cassie's annual egg hunt/potluck for her daycare and friends.  She filled and hid hundreds of plastic eggs with candy and trinkets inside.  Like last year, Eddie wanted to stop and eat all the candy in one egg before finding another one.  Dave and I helped him gather about 10 eggs total before he insisted on sitting down to munch on jelly beans.  The other kids, however, easily gathered about 50 eggs each.  I think Eddie must have eaten his weight in candy that afternoon!

I had to wake him up 10 minutes before the hunt began so he was a little
out of sorts when we got there. This was the best picture I could get of all the kids before the hunt began...Eddie, of course, being way off to the side.

I brought his potty chair to the park with us and actually got him to pee on it halfway through the festivities (I bribed him with the last remaining cake pop on the food table...which he didn't end up wanting to eat, so I got the treat instead!).

The next morning was Dave's big 30th birthday!  While he was showering I put his gift on the bathroom vanity so he'd find it.  It didn't take him long to realize what he got (a newegg.com gift card number).

Yep, at 30 you turn into an "old egg."

Dave's parents and my mom arrived at our house around 10:30am while I was busy making some picnic foods (pumpkin and fennel sausage pizzas, fruit salad, and Dave's birthday cake).

I'm getting tired of winter squash...but it blended nicely with the super sage-y and fennel-y pizza.

Then we headed to a new-to-us park, Playfields Park for a Easter egg hunt and birthday celebration with Mike, Bernie, and Zennie.  I brought some fancy toy-filled baskets for the cousins, made by my grade school friend, Lexi.  They loved all the special treats inside!

They were so sweet with each other, sharing toys and candy.

My handsome little fella with a stick o' peeps.

Zennie and Eddie looked so cute in their dress up clothes!  Her dress was so pretty and Eddie, well, it was a nice change of pace to have him in a collared shirt and slacks, even if he was wearing gross old Crocs.  Normally he insists on choosing his clothes so choosing an "outfit" for him was nice.  I'm not sure how I managed to get him into it.  Knowing he'd hate it, I waited until the excitement of the egg hunt to clip on the little red necktie that a friend at work gave me.  He didn't even notice!  (GAH, SO CUTE!)

Everyone milling around, waiting to get things started.

Uncle Michael pushed them on a swings for a while.

We ate our picnic (pizza, spinach quiche, fruit salad) and then did the egg hunt.  Bernie stuffed lots of eggs for the cousins...full of stickers, necklaces, sticky frogs, plastic bugs, and freeze-dried strawberries.  Eddie ate his weight in those strawberries and loved all the trinkets.  

Bernie's little boy is due next month!

The little businessman found some eggs!

Bernie brought a felt basket for each of the kids.  Of course Eddie chose the
pink butterfly one, leaving Zennie with the froggie one.

Zennie seemed to like the stickers best and realized that if she snuggled up on Dave's lap he'd give her all of Eddie's stickers.  She lined them all up on Papa's shirt (he, in turn, stuck them on our hall closet door when he got back to the house...what adult thinks it's appropriate to put stickers on someone's door?!).

After a while we sang happy birthday to Dave and enjoyed some cake.  He wanted "chocolate with chocolate" cake this year (his usual, I think) so I made my first Bundt cake with a dark chocolate glaze and optional strawberry sauce.  It was dang good, even if I did use crappy Hershey's bars for the cake batter.

Happy birthday, handsome!

Eddie took his cake into the cute little house and ate by himself.

This was the first year in a looooooooooong time that I didn't prepare a proper Easter dinner (ham, etc.).  Instead, we had Indian food from the freezer and some collards steamed in OJ.  It was fine by me!