Easter 2015

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter weekend. 

We had a lovely weekend with an Easter party at a friend's home on the Saturday and a day spent at home with Easter eggs, hot cross buns, an egg hunt and rain (yes, rain!) on the Sunday. Ava is back at school today and Kim is back at work after our week long Spring break (lots of posts about our adventures coming soon) but it still feels weird to me that there is no holiday for Easter Monday.

Here's a look at our Easter weekend...

On Easter Saturday we joined Lola's friends from swim class for an Easter party. The kids made bunny masks, we ate yummy food, and took part in an egg hunt. Some of the plastic eggs were filled with candy while others were filled with assorted Lego pieces which is a fantastic idea that I'll have to remember for another time. Mathilde found a yellow egg and then went on to collect lemons - which I guess kind of looked like yellow eggs too!  

Sunday morning Ava and Lola woke up early and couldn't wait to see if the Easter Bunny had visited overnight. Actually, they knew he had visited overnight as they could see his glittery footprints from the hallway. They just couldn't wait to go see what he'd left for them.

The Easter Bunny left an assortment of chocolates for the girls in their Easter boxes (which they painted the day before). There were Lindt gold bunnies all round as well as Cadbury creme eggs, Lindt carrots, Kit Kats and Crunch bars for Ava and Lola. The girls also each received a parcel of chocolates from my parents and a wrapped present from Kim and I. Ava and Lola were pretty excited to unwrap Elsa and Anna nighties and promptly changed out of their pajamas into them. Mathilde received an egg carton filled with colorful wooden balls which match the stacking wooden rainbow that she received for Christmas. There was also a balance beam for all three girls from Kim and I.

After checking out their Easter goodies, the girls decided to follow the Easter Bunny's footprints back out of our apartment to see where they came from. Sure enough, they led to our nearest fire escape just like always. For the first time ever Ava pointed out that the footprints only go in one direction, but she wasn't too fussed about finding out why. I was ready with the explanation that maybe the Easter Bunny had hopped out of the window. Or maybe he hopped backwards retracing his steps. Or, maybe, you know, it was just magic! The girls followed his footprints over and over which meant they ended up leaving their own glittery footprints everywhere. Mathilde's little glittery feet looked so cute!

For breakfast we ate hot cross buns. I still haven't been able to find authentic hot cross buns here. I bought hot cross buns from three different bakeries on Saturday so we had a selection to chose from. Some had icing crosses while some had no crosses at all. They all kind of tasted like hot cross buns but none were quite right. A "kind of" hot cross bun is better than no hot cross bun though.

All Sunday morning it rained which was fantastic. It did however mean that we had to postpone our egg hunt in the courtyard until afternoon. Our shared courtyard lies between the two buildings that make up our complex, and while it is pretty protected from wind, it's completely open to the rain. The morning rain gave us time to finish decorating our eggs. Ava had created fruit and vegetable eggs looking like a carrot, strawberry and a pineapple. I added green cardboard toppers to them as you can see in the very top photo. Once these were done, and the rain had stopped, we headed out to the courtyard for an egg hunt.

While searching for the last egg (there's always one that seems impossible to find) I discovered a little smiley face staring up at me in the grass. Back when Ava was in Kindergarten (two years ago) she had a plush choc chip cookie which went missing while she was playing in the courtyard with a friend. We spent hours looking for the thing over the next few weeks and eventually resigned ourselves to the fact that it was gone. I figured it had rotted away by now, but no, there it was smiling up at me in perfect, albeit muddy, condition. An extra treasure for our hunt!

When we were done finding eggs (and plush choc chip cookies) I realized that the girls hadn't eaten a single piece of chocolate all day. Somehow they'd made it to late Easter Sunday afternoon without any chocolate. Definitely a first! So they sat down together in the courtyard and ate one piece each: a Cadbury creme egg for Lola, a Freddo frog (from Mamma & Papa) for Mathilde and a crunch bar for Ava. Surprisingly, that was the only chocolate they ate all day.

Back inside we cracked open our last piece of Easter fun. And I mean cracked! For the last few years the girls have celebrated Easter with confetti eggs (Cascarones). I had never seen these in Australia and completely forgot to add them to my last post about the differences between Easter in Australia and America. They're basically egg shells filled with confetti and they are so much fun to play with. Ava and Lola cracked them over each other's heads, smashed them on the floor and threw them in the air. Mathilde just tried to eat hers and wouldn't let go of it. When the girls were done they got out a dustpan and broom and swept up the mess. Mathilde helped by picking up big pieces of shell and putting them in an Easter basket which she had earlier filled with bunny ears, chocolate wrapper and a smooshed banana!

All in all we had a lovely Easter weekend. I hope you did too.