From China to your house, with love

I'm not a good holiday celebrator; I think I've mentioned this. One thing I forgot was that the Easter Bunny hides eggs when he/she brings Easter baskets. My husband was kind enough to tell Mason this was going to take place a few days before it happened. It was good because it kick started my plan to help Mason enjoy the day. We already knew the Easter Bunny was going to be bringing a bike, but it inspired me to help the boys dye eggs and be prepared with extra baskets and treats so Mason could hunt for whatever the Easter Bunny chose to leave behind.

Just a question about the egg-dying process: Am I the only one who's noticed the options around these days? Alan just got the basics, an "original egg dying kit". It had NINE color options. Nine. That's basic? I think when I was a kid (and I'm not trying to complain, it was fun) we had four or six colors for options depending on the kit. If we wanted green, we made it out of yellow and blue. If we wanted orange, we made it. To be fair, Mason did try a chemistry experiment by putting the orange and purple tablets in the same cup. Since we didn't want a black egg, we nixed that cup and went with a seven-color variation that worked well.

Alan showed Mason the white crayon that lets you draw pictures (or names in our case) prior to dying. Mason wanted a fire engine sticker on his and his dad's eggs. My egg ended up being yellow and you couldn't read the "Mom" on it.

We played while the eggs dried; Mason was excited to put the stickers all over them, so we let him go nuts as soon as they were ready. (Also, probably the closest this blog will see to a belly shot; I'm not good at posing and I'm usually the one taking the pictures.)

Two nights before, Mason informed us that the Easter Bunny would be by our house that night. Alan told him that Easter was still a couple of days away, and it was going to take a while; the Easter Bunny's mode of transportation after all is hopping, and he was still clear on the other side of the world in China.


Well, as Mason enjoyed some of the candy and small toys, he let me know the Easter Bunny had brought them all the way from China. I think we'll wait a few years to get into the cultural and ecological differences that make that a little hard.

Either way, we had a fun day with our in-house Easter Egg hunt, taking Mason on long walks so he could enjoy his new bike (thanks also to Alan's younger brothers who both went on walks of their own with him!), playing MarioKart and Tiger Woods with Alan's brothers, and seeing Alan's parents after they had a weekend out of town. We also embarked on a round of Cities and Knights of Catan that might just be the longest game ever, but it was mostly fun.

His first question: "Where's the step?" He's now in the hang of getting on and off, even if he needs a little help sometimes. And one of these days, he'll have the pedaling thing completely down, too.

The helmet lecture. Would you expect any different from parents who are a paramedic and a dispatcher? Mason has taken to his helmet so well he likes to wear it around the house. Who are we to discourage this?



Happy Easter from our house to yours!