(Belated) Easter and Other Spring Fun

Where does the time go?

Weeks fly by and I realize I haven't posted to our blog. Meanwhile, Michael has become a rock star.

We've seen more airplanes than we can count.

Louis has been writing his name everywhere.

All three boys in our family are kings of the mountain.

And--oh, yes--we had a great Easter. There was egg dying (where we just couldn't fit Michael's whole name on the egg).

Louis, who always tries so hard to make connections in life, asked me whether we hard boil the eggs so that they're hard like the nails on the cross.

Well, it's a better explanation than I can offer. I think we do it just to make sure we buy a new bottle of vinegar.

Both boys were excited about the egg dying--especially Michael who can say, "Dye egg." Just over the past month he has started putting together phrases--such as a less-distinct version of "Where are you, Mater?" It's fun to hear him articulating more and more of what's in his head.

This was Michael's first Easter, so even though I was worried about letting him do his own egg dying, we also wanted him to experience as much of the holiday excitement as he could.

"Where are the eggs we dyed last year?" Louis asked. Then he and his brother polished off this year's by Easter Tuesday or Wednesday. They do love their eggs.

Our dear friends--Michael's godmother and her husband and three children--organized an egg hunt just for our boys, and they had a blast. Michael caught on right away and threw himself into the hunt.

We played and played and played. Louis has gained a new confidence on the playground since beginning preschool about two months ago.



And Michael is always confident on slides, though he still fears swings.

The next morning was Easter Sunday, and the boys could not wait to get downstairs to see their baskets. It was mostly a mystery to Michael, but when his big brother is excited, he's excited.

Louis ran into the living room and turned his basket upside-down. So, naturally, his little brother assumed that was the proper way to approach an Easter basket and did the exact same thing.

That worked well for Mama and Baba because when the boys were disagreeing over whose treat was whose, they had to work it out themselves. Neither one of them noticed what was in which basket before they dumped everything on the floor.

Michael enjoyed finding things inside the eggs.

And, although I had told him he could wear his pajamas downstairs, he insisted on dressing for the occasion. Both our boys are routine kids.

Then we all got ready to go to church--the real reason for waking up on Easter Sunday.

Now, if you are expecting to see photos of two handsome boys, keep reading.

If you are expecting them to be giving cheese smiles for the camera, however, you might want to stop.

Our two boys loved their day. They really did. They both got stuffed rabbits in their baskets (and somehow kept track of whose was whose even during the basket dumping) and they played with them a lot. But when I asked them to smile, Michael was too distracted and Louis was not interested.

We visited a statue of Jesus with the little children.

And this photo, which Michael tried to help with and Louis tried to do the opposite, actually makes me smile whenever I see it. Louis is trying so hard to look thoroughly bored.

Then they decided to give me angry faces.

But I did manage to snag one smiling Louis before the day was over. He looked so handsome in the suit his cousin Gregory handed down to him.

Later in the afternoon we went to Grandma and Grandpa's house to see my sister, brother-in-law, and their four children, visiting for the week. There was another egg hunt--can there ever be enough eggs at Easter?--and the boys loved seeing their cousins.

I don't know what the reason for the eggs is. There's certainly nothing spiritual or Biblical to that.

But we all had a wonderful time together as a family of four, surrounded by family from out of town...

...and with my newly engaged sister, Treasa, and her terrific fiance, Almost-Almost-Almost Uncle George, as Louis calls him. (Aren't they a beautiful, obviously happy couple?

It was a beautiful Easter--even if it did take me several weeks to put it all together in a blog.

So the egg hunt is long forgotten. Our next hunt? Seashells at the beach. And Baba and Louis are counting the days.