our Easter memories

The moment I saw pictures of a balloon Easter egg hunt I knew I wanted to try this. It was such a fun thing to do, I hope every Easter for the next few years includes a balloon egg hunt!

Overall we had such a wonderful Easter weekend I wanted to gush about it all on the blog so I can always come back to read it! Sam and Tom are at a really fun age to delight in all that is holiday magic…I just can’t help myself wanting to go all out.

It’s hard to believe that next Easter we’ll have a 6 month old in the mix too!

Our weekend started out early on Good Friday. I was lucky to be able to take off work and stay home with the boys who were out of school and daycare. The boys got a package with their names on it–made them feel pretty big time! It was full of Easter goodies from their great grandma and it made their day.

Then we got to have brunch with the Easter Bunny and I learned that Tom is one tough cookie.

Tom not only wanted to cry, he wanted to ESCAPE the room for fear of the Easter Bunny. He kept running to each door trying to open it and telling Sam and I to come onnnnn. But he ultimately put on a brave face and did this funny little nervous laugh and took a picture, even though I told him he didn’t have to.

If you could have heard him nervously reassuring himself through a forced laugh: “Da Easta Bunny no bite me, nooooo….. he nice!” “he no a lion….he nice!”

Bite?!? A lion?! This kid. Sam is happy as can be even though he remarked that was “a human in a suit” and Tom’s look is nothing but pure determination.

That night we stayed in with homemade pizza and a family movie. These “homemade” pizzas are an Aldi find!

Saturday we hosted one of my favorite new traditions. We had our second annual friends Easter egg hunt in the yard.

I love that as adults we can just pick and chose how we spend our holiday weekends and those are the little traditions that will make up our kids’ memories forever.

We lucked out with a gorgeous day as opposed to last years’ rainy hunt and the Easter Bunny himself even stopped by afterwards! Tom seemed okay with him this time around!

Easter is often a time we spend with family but if you have nothing going on the Saturday before, why not have an egg hunt with friends?

Saturday night I went to the MFM podcast live in St Louis with two of my oldest friends and it was a blast! The boys got to attend their great great aunt’s 105th birthday dinner.

105th !

And then, thanks to Pinterest, our Easter morning started off so sweet with this sunrise balloon egg hunt.

We dyed eggs last week with the intention to leave out for the Easter bunny to hide in the yard.

But, with only 11 eggs (it was a win to only break one!) it may have been a tough hunt in our big yard. Plus, kids seem to be programmed these days to want to know what’s IN the egg. In this case—it was nothing of course.

I figured hunting real eggs would be more exciting if it came with balloons!

The only tricky thing about this idea is that the helium doesn’t last long so the bunny can’t accomplish it the night before. He really needs to get started on this project about an hour before the kids get up which for this
bunny was pretty early…but just look how magical it was:

They were two happy little boys!

Word of advice if you are looking to do this…see if a friend has a helium tank with a little bit left! I lucked out that my mom had this tank but she figured it had enough for 1 or 2 balloons.

Surprisingly I got 8 and could have kept on but the clock was ticking. I had searched all over town and struck out at 3 places that afternoon! Nothing like the last minute 🙂

We spent the rest of a beautiful sunny Easter in church and eating with family then wrapped up at home in the evening testing out new bubble guns and the bath bombs the Easter bunny left.

All weekend I just felt so aware that Easters like this with young kids with all their egg hunting and matching jammies and excitability are so short lived. I’m thankful we were able to experience it to the fullest.