The Long Family: Easter Festivities Part 1

A long time ago my mom was telling me how big events, i.e. mother's day, holidays, etc, rarely meet our extremely high expectations so it's better to just go with the flow. Man, do I wish I would have taken her advice this year for Easter. I had about a zillion fun, neat things I wanted to do for Easter with my family all together but, like I was warned, none of it happened the way I had hoped but at the end of the day it was fine and we still have great, fun memories. I swear, after this year's visit the Bunny extravaganza, Nick and I have vowed to NEVER, EVER do it again. We get to the mall and go straight to the bunny line. It is not that long - I am thinking it will take us 45 mins. at MOST to get through it, including looking at the pics and paying for them. Well, 1 hour later we have moved about 2 feet and my kids are LOSING it!! I go up to see what the HECK is taking so long and the photographers are letting the moms/dads look at the pics and then do a whole other round of photos if they don't like any. This has NEVER been my experience with these character photo ops. Usually you get like four or five shots in a row and you have to pick the best of the bunch. Well, these were jolly little easter elves and they were taking 10, 15, 20 minutes with each family. So while I am up there this dad who is second in line to meet the bunny starts to talk loudly to his wife about how horrible his experience is here and how he will never come to this mall again! Before you know, there is some lady on a walky talky talking to another lady and this lady shows up and the line starts moving in no time at all! I love that angry dad!! So by the time we get to the bunny, it had been almost two hours and Brady is done. We could not get that boy to smile to save our lives!!! Here is the outcome:

Could any little boy look more miserable? I felt so awful!

After the bunny debacle, we head home and just want to take a nap and so do our kids so we do just that! Mind you, we still have not shopped for their basket stuff and it's Saturday around 4pm. Maybe we should not have been so quick to nap. Anyway, I wake up first and am seriously starting to get anxious because we still need to shop, I still want Brady to see the Easter Jell-O jigglers I made for him earlier in the day, we have to dye eggs, eat dinner, and writing this is making me feel anxious all over again! Nick wakes up and I say, I am going to get the stuff for the baskets, see ya later. I run to Wal-Mart and realize I left without making any dinner or nursing Avery. Just when I am thinking that, I get a call from Nick. Avery is hungry, what should Brady eat for dinner, etc. So Nick deals with the dinner situation and I deal with the other procrastinators at Wal-Mart the night before Easter at 7pm. Not great planning!! I get home very tired and Nick and I(well mostly just me) decide we still want to dye eggs with Brady, we'll just let him stay up an extra hour. Guess who was and was NOT excited about this plan......

At least he's trying, right?

While we get the egg stuffs ready, Brady partakes of the delicious Jell-O jigglers I made especially for him, and he LOVED them. It was probably the only part of the day that went right!!

This is where my memory gets dicey because I started to mentally break down when Brady started doing this:

So, after fretting about it, thinking I would be depriving my son of his first egg dying experience, we died 22 eggs and Brady broke all 22 eggs seconds after we pulled them from the dye. He was looking for "baby balls" inside the eggs.

A few cute ones before the egg demolition!