Easter Traditions: A Picture Laden Post

I hope you all had a fabulous Easter.  We did.  And now it is my moral obligation to bore you with the details.  

We woke up to find bunny tracks and bunny poop aka jelly beans all over our family room floor. 

E.B.  had entered through the fireplace again.  The good news is that in the movie "Hop" they showed E.B. tracks that looked just like the ones in our house, just a little or maybe a lot smaller, further reinforcing that E.B. is still real, even though the kids are 11, 9, and 7, which are about the ages that some kids start questioning the magic.  But not our kids, Hollywood just bought us a few more years.  The bad news is that the kids are baffled as to why E.B. insists on coming down the chimney like he's Santa or something.  My explanation?  Because if he came in through any of the doors, it would alert the dogs, who would then start to bark and wake us all up and then E.B.'s plan would be foiled and there would be no Easter baskets.  Logical, right? They bought it, for now. 

After following the tracks that led them to their baskets, which were actually Easter baskets this year instead of  Halloween trick or treat pails. (Score one point for the parents Easter bunny)  The kids checked out their loot, had a few pieces of candy for a prebreakfast snack and then began the process of getting ready for church because we had to be there EARLY.  I would show you pictures of them with their Easter baskets but my kids are weird and none of them really enjoy bothering with such things as pajamas.  Why bother with pajamas when they can take off all their clothes and just sleep in their tighty whities?  Oh, umm, well, I don't know..MAYBE SO I CAN TAKE A PICTURE OF THEM IN THE MORNING THAT IS SUITABLE FOR POSTING ON THE INTERNET!  Wait, maybe that's part of their master plan.   Joke's on them I got one anyway.  Also, should we have ever a house fire in the middle of the night, it won't be me that will be the laughing stock of the  fire department.

Her exhuberance shown in this picture pretty much sums up the overall mood in our house on Easter morning.  I assume this is exactly how Mary looked when she got to an empty tomb on that Easter morning so long ago. 

Once they were dressed, they still weren't digging the annual photo torture photo shoot.  Here's what I was working with...

I'm sure he's not frowning because he's wearing a hot pink tie.

 There's one in every crowd, am I right?!? 

Nothing says "He is Risen" like telling your kids through clenched teeth that they'd better smile DARNIT or E.B. was coming back to repossess their Easter baskets.  Just keepin' it real.

After a mini photo shoot, with promises made to many boos and hisses for another one later, we left for the annual "sonrise" breakfast at church.  Sonrise being 8:30 a.m.  We again discussed the need to either make the sonrise breakfast a brunch at 9:30 OR make our pastor get up and actually do a sunrise service at sunrise followed by a breakfast and then be done for the day and head home for naps.  I'm the church clerk now, I may have to sabotage business meeting notes to make one of those things happen.  I tease...kind of.  
Breakfast was delicious as always and church was great, once I woke up from my egg casserole induced coma.  Kidding, it was great and one of those services that gives you a lump in your throat.

After church, we headed home for another round of photos followed by our annual Easter egg hunt.  My motto is "photos before fun!" so using the egg hunt as incentive to cooperate for pictures worked to my advantage.  Desperate times, desperate measures, you saw what I was up against.

Men in Black

Not one of the better pictures but it's such a glimpse into the true personalities of our family.  There's me, always the poser, GI Joe laughing while trying to maintain control of the situation, Blade making sure he looks just right, Ryder looking annoyed, and Dakota with her "I really don't understand how someone of my intelligence could end up with parents like them" look which could easily be mistaken for the look of someone who is having constipation issues.  Yep, this pretty much sums up our family. 

Now we're on to something!

Oh what's that, we coordinate?  Really?  Weird, I hadn't noticed.  ;)

What, you've never seen zebra striped Easter dresses before? 

And no, I'm not "expecting" it's just the wind...or too many Reese's eggs...same diff.

Then it was time for the annual Koons Kids Easter Egg Hunt.  Every year the EB leaves a bag of Easter eggs filled with treasures and instructions for GI Joe and I to hide them around the yard for the kids to find.  He's very busy with his basket delivering route so he doesn't have time to hide them himself, besides it's dark out when he stops by so how could he?!?  We locked the kids in a closet in a room with the shades drawn and set about finding hiding spots for a vast number of eggs around our front and back yards.  The problem was that by the time GI Joe and I finished hiding all of the eggs we had forgotten where we'd put them all so as I speak there is at least one lonesome colorful egg out there shivering in the cold, waiting to be discovered later this summer. My only hope for it is that the candy stays good.  It stinks to get old.

Notice that's NOT a jack o lantern pail he's carrying!

Then later in the afternoon, we hosted our traditional Easter feast.  Except this year it was low on carbs and calories and high on healthy because we have terrible timing and started a dumb diet the Monday before.  No matter how bad you want it, roasted broccoli just does not taste like cheesy potatoes.  Then as is our Easter tradition, we flew kites.  And when I say we flew kites I mean, the kids ran really fast down the hill with their kite in the air hoping it would "fly" along because there wasn't much of a breeze (except for the one that previously poofed out my dress in unfortunate places during the photo shoot).  It's fine, it worked off all the candy they ingested. 

Kite flying followed by a viewing of "Gulliver's Travels" which E.B. had put in Blade's basket, because nothing says Easter like a giant man traveling to a miniature world.  Not that I would know anything about the movie because I took a glorious nap.  And then I rose again, just like Jesus.

It was a good day then, and it was a good day now.