Easter 2014

I know it's been pretty quiet around here lately, but it's for a good reason: we are still currently visiting family in Illinois. Since it only happens a couple times a year now, I have been trying to treasure the passing-by-in-lightening-speed time we have here. It's already been over a week and we are down to only 3 days left. I already don't want to leave.... but at least we have California sunshine and Myles' best buddy's birthday party to keep us from plummeting into a deep depression when we go back.

Now on to our Easter festivities:

(check out my recap of Myles' first Easter in his 8 Month Update)

We started our celebrating a couple weeks back with an 'Egg Scramble'. We drove about an hour to a beach front park on the bay. They had a pretty cool set-up going on there: lots of games, activities, crafts, food, and a photo opp with the Easter bunny himself! I had no plans on taking Myles to see the Easter bunny after everyone else's bad experiences I had seen floating around the internet. But when I saw him there, I had to give it a try. Luckily this bunny was super cute and nice looking. I was very impressed with this bunny suit, and so was Myles. I think it helped that he had a sucker to occupy him, but he had no problems sitting on his lap. He just kept looking at him trying to figure out what he was. He didn't even want to get up when our turn was over! First Easter bunny meet and greet: SUCCESS!

The best part of the whole day was the beach! This was the first time Myles was at an ocean beach and the awesomeness of it did not go unnoticed by him! He loved it, just like his momma does! When he first got to the water, he was asking daddy where the duckies were at(the first picture). He always does the I-don't-know hand when he asks questions. He spent most of his time discovering the beach. He found sticks and rocks to throw and his little feeties got to test out the water and sand. Eventually, he ended up with his butt in the water, so I let him go pants-less for a while (last photo). I can't wait to go back when we can stay for the whole day and actually get in the water.

After the bunny, beach, and games, we sat down for a little snack before the 'egg hunt.' It ended up being an absolutely gorgeous day with clear skies and a light breeze.

The egg hunt was more of a snack hunt, and there really was no hunting involved. The 1-2 year old area had crackers and fruit pouches, and they were just scattered around the lawn. It was still super intense though. All the parents were lined up waiting to ambush the treats and literally trampled the rope when the whistle was blown. Mark was trying to help put the rope back up and Myles took off into the sea of people. I freaked out and ran in to get him. Within 2 minutes, he walked out of the crowd with a bag of oyster crackers and a smile on his face! I don't know how he managed to get anything off of the ground with the other 40+ parents scavenging the area like it was packed with diamonds and dusted in gold! Crazy people; I'm just glad Myles got out unscathed.

Our next egg hunt was still less of a hunt, but this time we did get actual eggs! The Saturday before Easter we went to a children's museum (Discovery Center) for their Easter festival. We got there early enough to let Myles play for a while before the hunt. The tot area they have is awesome: water, trains, balls, life-sized kitchen replica, a car that can be worked on, and tons more. I'm sure Myles could spent all day there, but eventually we had to go get our egg hunt on. 

When we got there, we still had a couple minutes to wait, and Myles started getting super antsy. I let him walk around for a bit, but then he started to get really upset that he couldn't go get the eggs. By the time they were ready, Myles was over it. I tried to get him to calm down and help me pick up eggs, but he was in freak out mode. Towards the end, he did grab a couple. When we were all done, we went down by the water to open his eggs up. We got lots of goodies and Myles was finally happy again!

Later that night we took to dying our Easter eggs. This is normally my favorite Easter tradition, but with Dr. Destructo on my hands, I didn't really get to enjoy it much this year. I was able to occupy him all of 10 minutes before he decided to stick an ink pad in his mouth and proceed to freak out because I told him he couldn't chew on it! So our night ended with a scrub down in the bath and the hope that next year will go better.

Before we started trying to decorate them, I let Myles play around with his egg in a whisk. A couple weeks ago I read this post from Ashley and I thought the egg in the whisk was such a clever idea! We already dyed the eggs, but I thought it would be a good way to let him mess around with his egg and be less likely to break it. He really loved this! He was super intrigued and spent at least 5 minutes trying to figure out what was holding his egg!
 
















We did get in a little fun before operation turn Myles into a stamp ensued. He loved holding the eggs and was super excited about them; he just didn't quite get what to do with them. We tried stickers and stamps, and then he just decided to take a marker to the one I made for him. He did a pretty good job, but he got bored very quickly and only wanted to play with the ink.

Sunday morning we got up, dressed, and headed to church. My mom found this super cute suit for Myles with a bow tie! I loved the bright colors and just couldn't get over how handsome he looked. I tried to keep him in the sanctuary, but he wasn't having it! He lasted about 5 minutes before he was squirming his way around our legs to get out of the pew. So I grabbed him up and took him to play in the nursery. He wasn't familiar with the people there and wouldn't let me leave. So I spent the rest of the service watching him play with cars, go down a slide, and pretend to be a baby in a crib. 

After service we had an impromptu photo-shoot out front. It was not an easy task to get Myles to stand still for more than 5 seconds, so these are the best we got:

After church, we went out to breakfast. 
Myles wasn't interested in anything but watermelon!

 And of course, a little selfie action on the ride home! Love that big toothy grin!

After a clean up, nap, and a change of clothes, we headed to my aunts for dinner and another egg hunt! The food was super yummy; all traditional, comfort foods! From the moment he walked in the house, Myles was ready to go outside to investigate the lawn that was sprinkled with tons of eggs. When everyone was finally ready for the egg hunt, I figured Myles would be all about it. HA! I walked out there with him and all he wanted to do was wonder around the yard. He picked up one egg when we first started, then after that he just walked around trying to figure out what all the other kids were doing. After a couple minutes of that, he decided that he wanted to stick an egg through a fence hole. I told him not to push it all the way through because it would be gone forever, but of course he didn't hear a word I said... bye bye purple egg! In the end, we (I) got a good amount of eggs and candy for us to share! Myles tried a couple M&Ms and I stole a mini-snickers!

Lastly, a little post-Easter basket hat fun!

I loved reading all of your Easter recaps this week! We had a really great time celebrating this year and now I can't wait for the next holiday!