Happy Easter!

The week started out with a big victory for Caroline who won my office NCAA basketball pool and collected $172. She had no idea what to do with the money and dropped most of it on the floor (good thing we snuck it off to her college account). We realized later as she was asking about swimming that she thought the celebration was about another sort of pool! I should note that most of her picks were contributed by Jamie, although she correctly selected North Carolina to win, based on its resemblance to her name.

Katie's big news this week was that she was accepted into the all-day kindergarten program at the Catholic school we've selected. She was very proud that her screening test came back with nothing to work on and called our kindergarten expert (Grandma) to share the news. Poppy asked her how she got so smart and she responded "It's just me."

As we talked more and more about Easter the girls were delighted to receive surprise Easter packages from Jamma and Bates. Katie got right to work on the puzzles and one morning before school she very seriously tried to help Caroline learn the name of the Disney princesses. She was terrific with her and when Caroline would mis-promounce one, she'd say "Don't worry. You'll get it."

One evening after the girls were bathed and PJ'd Jamie snuck them under our covers so that they could surprise me. You can see they were very pleased with themselves! All was well until Lily decided to join the fun . . . she's not the best at gauging where people's limbs are.

Saturday's big activity was dying our Easter eggs. Unfortunately, I had the girls excited to do it and then we needed to wait for Jamie to have a post-lawn mowing shower. It was really hard to stall (you can only practice the colors on the box so many times . . .) and then once the dyes were mixed up, it was even harder to keep their hands out of them.

Caroline was all about purple and dyed her first 5 eggs that color. Although, later she started grabbing her completed eggs and dumping them into other colors, so she ended up with some variation. Katie very carefully made sure that she had a full rainbow of eggs.

The down side of the activity was that we really struggled to get the dye off of Caroline's hands. One was purple and the other was black (if you're wondering about how we got black, when we were done, we poured all of the dye into one pot- which turned black- and Caroline got her hand in it). After doing some online research, the prevailing advice was Lava soap, so we picked some up as we were out doing errands. I will add my testimonial that Lava soap worked the best out of the options we tried.

Of course after we finished scrubbing up Caroline so that she was in Easter Sunday form, Katie returned from playing next door where Miranda had painted her "nails." I use the word nails loosely because it looked more like she had painted from the knuckle up, and unfortunatley it looked awful- as if she had stuck her hand in a blender. More scrubbing ensued, with the addition of nail polish remover to the Lava soap.

Easter began with the girls having hard bolied eggs for breakfast. Katie was up bright and early and all dressed in her church clothes.

We saved the Easter egg hunt until after church. This year we had a scavenger hunt with clues leading from one egg to the next, with the baskets hidden at the end.

The girls found their first eggs in their car seats on the way to church. I read them the clue and after several minutes of hard thinking Katie asked "How did the bunny write this clue?" And, to increase the level of difficulty the clues were typed, so the rabbit would need to be computer savvy as well as be able to speak/write! I told her that he probably had helpers like Santa. She said, "Oh, so they might be people?" I found this whole exchange rather comical since I always pictured the Easter bunny to be like the one at the mall. Since they have never visited this sort of bunny, she obviously pictures a small animal.

There were two eggs at each location, but only one had the clue. Katie very quickly figured this out and I noticed she would race to the location and then discretely open both eggs and then say "here's yours, Caroline" pointing to the one without the note. This reminded me of one of Jamma's favorite stories to tell about Jamie. He and his brother David had identical goldfish and one day Jamie discovered one of them floating on the surface of the water. He yelled "Dave, your goldfish died!"

Caroline didn't care one way or the other. She kept getting distracted by things we found along the way. The second clue took them to the playhouse and mentioned a place where they could play chalk. She immediately began asking to do chalk. Later the eggs were in the dollhouse and that ended Caroline's involvement in the hunt.

As we neared the last clue and it was time to find the baskets, we called Caroline upstairs. Once she laid eyes on the basket she reached out and grabbed the peeps on top and had two in her mouth before we could protest!

The girls were also excited about their new hula hoops and sidewalk chalk. The played in the back, while I got brunch ready.

Then got to the long-awaited chalk.

It was a nice sunny day, but never got very warm. After Caroline got done pretending she was the Easter bunny, she decided she was cold. She popped inside and returned in the outfit of four seasons, which included capri pants, rain boots, a winter hat and a fallish jacket.

On our way up to the bath, she stopped for a nap on the steps!