easter.

Easter this year was beautiful and low key. After lots of busy days leading up to the holiday, it was unspeakably needed to have some beautiful weather and something important to celebrate. I feel conflicted that we've never taken Nate to church, so I've been trying to teach him the significance to big holidays with the help of kids' books and YouTube. We watched a kids cartoon about the meaning of Easter, which only made Nate ask for Cheese-Its (which, I guess does sound semi-close to Jesus). Maybe next year ...

In any case, we started off the day with Nate's Easter basket. I insisted that he put on a nice shirt for a photo and I think it was on and off in a matter of sixty seconds. The basket was a hit: Goldfish (our tradition), a stuffed bunny (he's obsessed with stuffed animals), ONE chocolate bunny (the only candy that we gave him), and a PlayDoh set - all in a robot bucket that he can use in his sandbox. The PlayDoh was especially timely because Nate's been watching (creepy) videos of a woman demonstrating how to play with different toys - scenarios, voices, and all. He spent about two hours afterwards making 'worms'.

Later, we put a (new?) twist on an egg hunt. First, instead of candy in the eggs, I put in change. Nate loves putting "coins", as he calls them, into his piggy bank and this helped to avoid a sugar overload. Second, we were able to video chat with Chris's parents so that they could be involved in part of the holiday, even though they are all the way in Texas. Notice, Nate is wearing a different shirt - one that was cotton, no collar, and no tag (picky much?) and a beloved superhero cape given to him by his aunt and uncle.

Listening to the coins inside of the egg :)

Quick break to 'fly' around like Superman!

My little jokester kept telling us "trick-or-treat".

This cape has seen some mileage. Love this thoughtful gift, so perfect for him!

I'm not much for traditional Easter food. Spiral ham? No, thank you! I haven't eaten ham since I read Charlotte's Web, and that's a fact. No worries, I DO eat bacon like a normal person :)  Since we had such beautiful spring weather - blue skies, seventy degrees, puffy clouds - we grilled out for dinner. I plan to get our money's worth out of our grill now that it's warming up outside! My family came over and Nate got a second basket from my parents - this one, much to his delight, was chocked full of candy.

One epic sugar meltdown later, Nate was put to bed, and our holiday drew to a close. I was so thankful to be able to spend the day with family, near and far away. Now comes the hard part: rationing out the candy motherload for my little sweet tooth - he is SO insistent and persuasive.