Before we had children, Easter was just a date on the calendar for Peter and me, and even with Neil it was a low-key occassion, usually consisting on an egg hunt and a basket with a chocolate bunny. But as is becoming clear, Kelly loves being out and about, preferably with others of her age. And as a result, this Easter weekend had three (three!) egg hunts and we threw a party.
Kelly has been wanting to have a party for a while, and I finally came around to the idea of an Easter party. Kelly’s already collected a list of dear friends she talks about (it’s a collection of modern girl names: Pearl, Crystal, Haley, Kaitlin, Gilly, Megan, Gracie, Sierra, Annika, etc.) and I figured I could put together a few crafts, an egg hunt, and some carrot cake to make my daughter happy. Peter and I settled on the best place and time to the Friday park day of Kelly’s three regular home schooler park days, and put out the invite.
The party was a success: Kelly had about seven of her favorite peers (two of which were non-homeschooled friends of hers she knows from storytimes and community center classes) and they had a merry time playing on the playground, and searching for eggs. Here’s Kelly and Kaitlin finding eggs together:
The older children weren’t left out either: they hid the eggs for me and I had plenty of crafts on hand for them as well as for the little ones. I made my favorite carrot cake recipe, which is frighteningly healthy: with no refined sugar, whole wheat flour, carrots, zucchini, and pineapple. It is actually delicious, but those who are suspicious of such things were grateful another mom brought two big boxes of donuts to nullify that health attack.
The next day, Neil’s boy scout troop helped put on a big community egg hunt at Schallenberger Elementary School. There were 6000 eggs and children were released in stages, according to age. Kelly was already a seasoned egg scooper. When her age group was released, she bounced past her peers to the deep end of the field to be able to grab more eggs, so more the faster. Here she is (in the pink dress on the right) running out:
In this case, the eggs were plastic, with candy inside and the ocassional “golden ticket.” Kelly lucked out with SIX golden tickets, which she redeemed for trinkets, like a faux camera, with which she and a friend clicked pictures of each other and me:
We figured that was enough egg hunts, but wouldn’t you know it: the Easter bunny reappeared while the children were out playing on Easter Sunday, and we had another Easter egg hunt in our back yard.
With Kelly, the holidays are all out. Cinco de Mayo is coming up, so I’d better start planning now.