the hunted

When Pearl woke up from her afternoon nap on Easter Sunday it was time to hunt for Easter baskets. George was quite patient to wait all that time, and when we said he could start looking he was so thrilled. He remembered that last year his basket had been in the dryer so that is the first place he wanted to look :).


He found his basket in the bathtub and immediately started examining its contents.


I love his fist-fulls of Dum Dums.


After he had looked through his basket for a few minutes he left all his goodies on the coffee table so that he could go help Pearl find hers. The best part was that Pearl was not interested in finding hers; she had anything she could have ever dreamed of right there in front of her :).



She's like, "Woooww! Mom! Have you seen all these treats?!"


George was hunting for Pearl's basket in the kitchen and I decided I should probably have John bring her in to join the party. I seriously cannot handle how much I love her up on those tippy toes.


She sat down on the tile and watched over her shoulder as George discovered her basket in a cupboard. He brought it over to her for her to look through and she humored us by glancing down at its contents for a moment before speed-crawling back into the living room to attack George's treats.


We didn't know if we'd be able to do any Easter egg hunting with extended family this year since both of our families were supposed to be out of town, so we planned a mini hunt at our house with a few dozen eggs for the kids to find. George was loving it.


Pearl was less impressed, but she did reach out and grab a few colorful eggs as long as they were within about 2 feet of her :).


One thing she quickly learned to do was pop those little eggs right open and sample the contents.




This was our best attempt at a photo with both of them and their Easter baskets. Pearl could not be bothered to look up from her candy.


In the end, John's mom ended coming back into town to be with the family on Easter so she put together an Easter dinner and hunt at her house that evening. I feel really blessed to have all of this family; George only has one cousin at all right now, and I love that when we get together with John's extended family there are so many more "cousins" to play with. Most of them are actually John's cousins or his cousins' kids, but George loves them all so much and they have so much fun together.

Pearl was loving sitting on Grandpa's lap, especially because he was wearing glasses :). She loves swiping glasses off of people's faces and putting them on her own.


These pictures of Pearl with her great-grandpa (John's grandpa) are some of my most favorite photos ever. I think I love them so much because I know how much Grandpa truly delights in and adores his grandchildren, and that tender love is so evident to me when I look at these. Seeing these pictures makes me want to get photos of my children like this with each of our grandmas and grandpas so that I have them to show my babies someday.


Oh, they seriously melt me. Love these two people so much.


Logan had his basket all ready to go :).


Here are some of the younger kids sitting by the door waiting for the green light to go out and start hunting for eggs.


And they're off!






Aunt Lisa helped Pearl find a few eggs with some special things in them just for her like little hair bows. I love that Pearl totally looks like she should be Lisa's daughter-- so pretty with their dark hair and blue eyes!


Georgie was happy with his findings.


Pearl snuck a few treats that had fallen into the grass from someone's basket. Or, more likely, her brother thought it would be really thoughtful of him to give his little sister some peanut M&Ms to snack on.


After all of the eggs were found we decided it would be a good idea to have a little more sugar, so I made this cake for us to celebrate Grandma and Grandpa's birthdays.


I really like the perspective of these photos-- Grandpa's hand and the cake in focus with him blurred in the background. He was trying to block the wind from blowing out the candles before he and Grandma were ready.


There they go, only a few years old it would appear :).


The cake actually turned out to be pretty tasty, which I was happy about because sometimes elaborate plans to make fancy cakes end up being nice to look at but not so great for eating. Yay for a festive cake that was still worth the calories to eat :). (I cannot remember the website where I got the recipe and idea for this cake from, but I know I linked to it from The Pioneer Woman's cooking blog... if you are curious or want to make it I am sure you could find the link there.)



Mama and baby eating some cake. (This was a momentous occasion since it was the first day John and I had eaten refined sugar in quite sometime after giving it up for Lent this year.)


Daddy and his girl waiting for their piece.


John snapped a few pictures of people as we were eating on the porch and I especially liked this one of Spencer. He is so happy and cute.


And this one of Natalie and Prestley.


With cake and candy-filled bellies the kids decided to hit the trampoline for a little jumping. (I love Prestley's flying ponytail in this second picture.)


Pearl is just like her mama in that she doesn't ever want to miss a party, so she made a beeline off the porch to join the big kids.


Luckily Grandma was there to wrap her up in a blanket and take her out for some stories on the trampoline. Lucky for Pearl, but mostly lucky for me because I was getting cold and really didn't want to have to take her out there myself :).


Wowsers, that was a lot! My final Easter photo this year is just to document my stealth thieving ability. John thought it was totally mean of me to steal this many paint chip samples from Home Depot, but I say, they are free, that is not stealing! Who's with me?! I saw this linked to on lots of blogs this year and decided to make one for myself. I'm sure I could dig up the original site to credit it to if anyone wanted it. I love the cheery, colorful splash it adds to my living room and I still haven't taken it down. Easter egg garland year-round, anyone?