Easter Egg Hunt & Dinner

Since we were hosting Easter Dinner for family and friends and I knew we'd have three little kids at the house, I thought an Easter Egg Hunt would be fun. My Grandma Catney used to have the best Easter Egg Hunts at her house. She hid what seemed to be hundreds of plastic eggs....when we were little I'm sure there was only candy in them, but to lure "too cool" middle and high school aged kids into participating, she added money when we got older. That did the trick! As I was filling the eggs a few nights beforehand Jon and I were talking a lot about Grandma - unfortunately, by the time he came around the egg hunts had ended, so he never got to experience one.

Grandma was also a really good hider of the eggs - they'd be in between trash bags and the liners, hidden inside plants, under cushions...she was good. One Easter I brought my college roommate, Sonika, to dinner. Sonika hadn't ever participated in an Easter Egg Hunt before and was a little overwhelmed when the 5 grandkids gathered in the laundry room while Grandma handed out our plastic bags to go get the hidden eggs. She couldn't understand why we (as college and high-school kids) were still doing this. I think Sonika found one (of the 90+ eggs), after Grandma helped her. She just stood in the yard looking at us like we were crazy. Truthfully, we probably were, but it was still fun!

With an Easter Egg Hunt consisting of 3 kids that were all 2 and under, we were going with a "hidden in plain sight" theme....the eggs were just out in the yard in mulch. In fact, Curtis actually went out and hid them while we were waiting for Jon's side of the family to arrive. However, he let Hannah and Jake watch out the window while he was putting the eggs outside, so we had a hard time telling them that they had to wait for Gavin to arrive!

Unfortunately, Gavin wasn't able to come over because he ended up staying home to take his afternoon nap (and Ryan stayed with him), so as soon as Rachel showed up and told us that Gavin wasn't coming we went ahead and let Hannah and Jake round up the eggs. Jacob knew just what to do and was out gathering eggs in no time. Hannah didn't want to be barefoot...then just wanted the one egg that she found first....especially after Daddy showed her there was candy inside...

Enjoy the pictures!

Jacob enjoyed himself!
Hannah found her first egg

She walked around so cautiously looking for eggs
Found one!

Daddy shows her the candy inside...

Yummy!

"Here's my egg!"

While I wrapped up the meal Curtis and Jake played on the swingset a bit. Thank goodness we're able to "toss" the kids outside while we finish getting things ready!

Ah, dinner table is all set!

We set up a table in another room for a buffet line, which really helps the table be less crowded when it's set for 8-10 people! We had a good meal, but people had to leave pretty quickly to get kids down for naps and that kind of thing. At least we were able to gather with family and friends.