Easter Highlights

Here are the kids immediately after their Easter egg hunt following Mass on Sunday. Dave gave each of them a map with separate clues so that no one could arrive at a location first and claim the whole loot. Thus, the kids ran around the house in an absolute flurry finding chocolate hidden in linen closets, under pillows and on window ledges. Thankfully, this was entirely Daddy's project and all I had to do was lead Ben around to each of his destinations. Of course, there has to be at least one humourous anecdote: Dave had carefully left his prizes in 30 different locations. However, the remaining chocolates were sitting on the dining room table in a clearly visible pile. Each time that Ben was given a direction (e.g. Go to the toy box; Go to the dog bowl), he would pass the table and look at the pile of chocolate; then he would look at Dave and I with concession and a bit of suspicion as if to say, "OK, if you say so, but there's a perfectly good pile of candy sitting right there in front of me." Don't children always have a way of finding the loophole?
p.s. If I were to use blog names instead of the real names of my husband and kids, Dave would be called Mr. Solid (just like Hannah's Easter Bunny; unfortunately, there is also a Mr. Nutty and a Mr. Fruity).

This is where I found Joe yesterday when I began to wonder why things were so quiet.

I decided to sit and watch before I reprimanded. Much to my surprise, when he began to realise that he had made a mess, he toddled off to the drawer that houses the face cloths and toddled back with flannel in hand to try and wipe things up. Who knew that he was aware of the face-cloth location, let alone their many uses?

If you read this blog with any frequency, you will have realised that I am always slightly behind the timing of major celebrations. It's as if my energy kicks in the day after major feast days - I operate in Feast-Day Savings Time. So, this cake was produced yesterday (Tuesday). It is decorated with a cross and a J (for Jesus, not Jacob) and Hannah wrote, "Jesus is Risen" on one side while Jacob wrote, "Jesus is Risin" on the other. I was very tempted to add an apostrophe to Jacob's version (Jesus is Risin') and thus have one side in the perfect tense and one side in the imperfect tense, Valley style.

And, lastly, here is Hannah maintaining total control: one baby and one dog - both securely tethered to their mother/owner.