Easter!

We had a very low-key Easter-day this year, with everyday cereal for breakfast, a trip to the grocery store, some yard work, and a long toddler nap. Nico got a simple Easter basket, which definitely paled in comparison to the swanky loot-hauls I saw posted all over Twitter. Good thing my kid does not have a Twitter account is all I'm saying. Anyway, he was beyond pleased with his two cheap plastic cars and his previously-purchased cheepy bird.

Around 4:30 we headed over to my aunt's house for the family dinner and kids' egg hunt. The egg hunt used to be a much more epic affair, with a dozen or more kids hunting plastic eggs in the grass. I have so many great memories of the annual hunt, some of them somewhat hilarious (like the time my dad stepped on an egg by accident and made me take it even though it was cracked…I was scandalized…or the time I was beelining for an egg perched in the branches of a tiny tree, only to have a taller cousin reach past me and snag it at the last second). My family is big on fairness and no one has ever frequented those awful egg hunts you read about where people are knocking kids down to get the loot. Instead, somebody adds up all the eggs contributed by all the aunts and then divides by the number of kids hunting. Only two of my first cousins are still young enough to hunt eggs anymore (and we had to twist the 13-year-old's arm) and there aren't that many cousins' kids yet, so this year we only had 7 kids hunting. Because of this, they each were tasked with finding 26 eggs.

At first, Nico was just thrilled to be running around outside with the bigger kids.

Then the hunt began and he was typically skeptical.

"You want me to do what with the what?"
Eventually he grasped the concept.

As my mom predicted, he started to get really into it just as we ran out of eggs. He kept saying "Find Easter eggs!" so I chucked about ten of his eggs into the grass and let him re-find them. Then two of my cousins came back outside with over-quota eggs their kids had picked up, so we tossed those out and let Nico find them, too.

At the end I made him stand still with his basket for a few photos. I got a gorgeous shot that I have fallen in love with, but I've already posted it once, so here's a skeptical one, dedicated to the bibliophile, who seems to appreciate Nico's skeptical face as much as I do.

"What the hell, Mama?
Once again, I find that holidays are way awesome with a kid. Way, way awesome.