This post IS about Easter

After receiving my blog book in the mail and knowing I left a bunch of things out of the blog that actually happened, I now have to make a conscious effort to include holidays.

So, this post is about Easter. And it's pretty long, just so you know. But there's lots of pictures!

Thursday morning, I took Andrew to a fun playgroup Easter egg hunt. I didn't know if he would understand what he was doing or not, but he did, and it was really funny. He just kept repeating, "egg! 'nother one!" and "more!" and then as he was running from one to the next, "run run run!" He was way into the candy this year also. Hyper children. So fun.

We went to San Antonio on Thursday afternoon, and spent the weekend with my sis and her husband. On Friday we made plans to go to the Zoo, but when we got there, we had to wait in line to find a parking spot, it was so crowded and after being directed to park under a scary ghetto freeway overpass with a million other people and cars, and having seen concourses of people streaming toward the gates, with lines a mile long, we decided to go to the park instead. Which was awesome, and free, and not crowded. We thought we had gotten strike two when we got there and it started to rain, but fortunately, it stopped and we ate our lunch there and played for a long time before going home. It was a much better choice. My brother in law, Ritchie, when he found out about our ill fated zoo trip, he was like, "oh, I could've told you it was going to be crowded... it's San Antonio tradition to camp at the zoo on Easter weekend." Would've been nice to know all of San Antonio was converging on the zoo before we got there! And anyway, who CAMPS at the zoo??? But I think we had a better time at the park anyway.

That afternoon, we dyed Easter eggs, always a fun tradition. Andrew decided to just plop his in the dye, rather than dip. Good thing he left out the banana.Aubrey's were mostly pink and purple. I recently found out pink has been dethroned as the long reigning favorite color champion by purple. I'm pretty sure pink is gonna want a rematch.

I don't know why we hard boiled so many because afterwards, we all looked at each other and said, "but I don't really like hard boiled eggs!" Except Ritchie, who could eat them, heavily salted, in two bites.

And then, Saturday, we went to this beautiful antique rose garden for an Easter egg hunt. The last time we were in SA for Easter, two years ago, we went there and it was FREEZING cold. I think it actually started snowing when we were leaving. This time, it was a little cold, but much more enjoyable. They had two separate egg hunts, one for the little ones, and one for the older ones, which was a really good idea, as Aubrey dashed around and had thirty colorful eggs collected in about two minutes, whereas Andrew was slow and steady, and stayed within about a five foot radius, and ended up with about half as many. We walked around the rose garden for a while and admired the pretty flowers and plants. And took some pictures. The roses and flowers were in peak bloom and they were really pretty. We even found some other signs of Spring... right after Chad took this picture of his beloved (his idea, not mine) I look to my left and saw a bird's nest in that climbing rose bush.

That afternoon, we made sugar cookies and decorated them. (Actually, Lindsay made them, we just decorated them). Sprinkles, and lots of them, were a must. At least in Aubrey's mind. Same for frosting. And then we ate them.

Sunday, the Easter bunny came... We are kind of soft on believing in the Easter bunny. I'm not sure how much Aubrey really believes in him, which makes me fear for the Tooth Fairy and Santa. But anyway, our easter tradition, the string hunt, was fun. Basically, instead of having all your gifts in a basket waiting for you, they are tied to string and hidden all over the house, and you have to wind up the string and find the stuff as you go. Makes the celebration last a little longer. When I was a kid, I thought everybody had string hunts on Easter and was really surprised to find out later that no one did... that my grandma was the one who made it up. At least in our family. So, that was fun. And church, always great, on Easter. Especially for more candy. Unfortunately, we forgot to take pictures before church so after church, Andrew had some chocolate on his shirt in the pictures. Oh well. Pretty typical.

We also watched a lot of movies over the weekend too. Friday, Ritchie and Chad went to a Spurs basketball game and the rest of us stayed home and watched two movies Aubrey picked out... Space Buddies, and The Retrievers, strangely, both dog movies. I've never seen her pick out dog movies before, let alone two. I didn't even think she loved dogs. Apparently that happened about the same time that purple beat pink. I guess we had a dog theme going, because later that night, when the boys got back, we watched Marley and Me. It was good. Saturday night, I really wanted to watch the movie Australia, and we did, but we were convinced we were watching The Never Ending Story because, I don't know if Australia has won any awards, but I would definitely give it an award for the most plot lines and fake-out endings... honestly, at least three or four times, I thought it was over... the music swelled, the camera panned out... And then it kept going! It did actually end, after about 2.5 hours, but I thought one of the previous endings would have been better. I thought it was one of the weirdest movies. But then we watched Seven Pounds. And that was a weird movie too. And it sort of traumatized me. So, not the best choice of movies. I think Marley and Me was probably the best one we watched over the weekend.

I always love going to San Antonio and it was way fun to see Lindsay before she has her baby. They just decorated their baby's room and it was SO cute. I probably won't be back before she has Little Miracle Miller, so we lived it up this weekend.