Happy Easter

Easter was definitely different this year.  Spending Christian holidays in a predominantly Muslim country is a little window into what people of other religions must feel in the USA.  The grocery stores did have a tiny end-cap with some Easter candy, but otherwise, one would never know the holiday was approaching.  Because the British population is so large here, the stores tend to cater to them and the way they celebrate holidays.  I learned that they don't dye eggs in the UK so there was no egg dye to be found anywhere!!!  Luckily, my mom was thinking ahead and brought us some when she came a few weeks ago.  We were able to share our egg-dying tradition with all our UK friends.  Traditionally for them, some of them didn't do anything with eggs, while others hard boiled them and the kids decorated them with markers.  They all thought the dyed eggs were much prettier.

Our Easter weekend started with Friday brunch at the Four Seasons.  They had a good kids area with face painting, balloon animals, bounce house, etc.  The kids had a good time, as did the parents.

Avery with her balloon flower

Egg toss contest

Natalie spent the day collecting all the popped balloons and tying them into long colorful strings.  She had a massive rainbow by the end of the day.

Chase and George spent the day sword fighting with balloon swords.

My favorite dessert is the Molten Lave Cake at Chili's and I was thrilled to find these chocolate soufflés at the brunch.  They were almost as good!!

Saturday was the official egg dying day.  It was the first year in a long time that Nana wasn't with us for Easter weekend and the annual egg dying event.

Natalie and Chase teaching Avery how to drop in the tablets of dye.

Squinty eyes (it is really bright here)

Dad even helped out this year

Cute boy with his bunny egg

Avery with a few of her masterpieces

Natalie with her frog

Natalie with her collection of finished eggs

So cute!

Chase with his collection of eggs

Fantasitc!

Avery was up first on Easter morning.  Luckily, it is Spring Break this week so no school on Easter!!  Bobby did have to work though.  Boo...  We didn't have our Easter baskets from home here, so we had to improvise.  We bought sand buckets and decorated them and left them out for the Easter Bunny.

I love my Chick card from Nana!

Chocolate bunny!!

YEAH!  Creme Egg!

The Easter Bunny hid eggs inside and outside.  The kids had fun hunting them.

How do you like my Christmas PJ shirt on Easter morning??

We were invited by Julie (mom of Tillie, Charlie, and Jack) to meet at a park for their annual Easter Egg roll.  I had never heard of an Easter Egg Roll, so we wanted to check it out.  We went to Aspire Park, which is a park littered with security guards enforcing all these ridiculous rules (like no climbing trees, no playing with a ball, no riding bikes/scooters.  This is a beautiful park with a great running path and huge green spaces and it is such a waste that you basically can't have fun there.  Anyway, we all met at the top of a hill and rolled/tossed/threw our hard boiled eggs down the hill.  We had to do this really quickly because of the crazy strict security guards.  The guard at the top of the hill called in reinforcements and soon a golf cart with two other guards pulled up.  They watched the kids exploding eggs all over the grass for a few seconds and then saw us picking up the remnants and decided to leave us alone.  Whew!!  The kids thought it was great fun making a huge egg mess everywhere so maybe we will add this to our Easter traditions at home!

It was most weird not going to church on Easter Sunday.  We made sure to teach the kids the events in the Bible leading up to the crucifixion of Jesus during the week and the story of the resurrection on Easter Sunday, but still, no dressing up, no family pictures, no worshipping together with our church family like all the ones I was seeing on Facebook was a big change for us.  Overall, it was a different, but still fun Easter!