Winters' World: April 2011

Baby chick week at CAL Ranch store in Idaho Falls. Big hit.

Coloring eggs with Grandma Suitter. Grandmas have bigger mess tolerance levels than moms.

Easter has already came and went. Seemed late this year. Maybe because the weather has been so cold this spring. Or maybe because it was just, late. Sloane is still just a skosh too young to really get it. I have so been looking forward to the time when we could bribe her with "you need to be good or (insert Easter Bunny, Santa Clause, Great Pumpkin etc.) will not visit you this year." Porter was especially too young. 10 months now - can you believe it? Last year, we really overdid the Easter thing and learned a lesson: too much Easter candy when they can't really eat it leaves it to the parents to eat for the next 6 months or Phil takes to the office where it gets devoured in under 30 minutes. This year, I think we struck a good balance.

The Easter Bunny's loot

We did hide some Easter eggs around the house which thrilled Sloane - especially the ones with coins in them. She ran around the house with her basket and when she would find one, she would gasp, pause a little, then grab the egg and empty the contents onto the floor, then discard the empty egg and run on to find the next one. This left us scrambling to pick up jelly beans, coins and little pieces of chocolate desperately before Porter could army-crawl over and shovel the discarded goodies into his mouth. Her favorite item was a little tin of lip glosses. She carries them everywhere and even sleeps with them, but has yet to really put any on her lips.

We had a nice Easter brunch at Crane Creek with some friends and there was another egg hunt there after the meal. They divided the kids into 2 age groups: 5 and older and under 5 and sent them out to 2 different greens to divide and conquer. The kids lined up, the starting whistle blew and off they went. Keep in mind, Sloane is very cautious without an aggressive streak anywhere in her. She ran to several groups of eggs, only to be caught off guard by some Easter crazed 4 year olds who shoved her out of the way and scooped up all of the eggs before she could protest while their admiring parents cheered them on. I had no idea that egg-hunting competitiveness would outweigh politeness or "sharing" that we all teach them so hard to learn from an early age. Oh no. All of that gets THROWN OUT THE WINDOW for the egg hunt. Another lesson learned. While we will still demand that our children learn how to share and play nice for the rest of the year, we will secretly be training her for the next 11 months for the next bunny-eat-bunny egg hunt. Happy Easter!