The Pre-Easter Fun

The girls and I had a fun day today filled with Easter crafts, a trip to the farm, and some good ole' fashioned egg dyeing.

The farm that we visited was AWESOME!! We got to pick up eggs in a large field - they have a great concept of just throwing out a million plastic eggs and the kids can pick up as many as they want - then they take them back, dump them in a bin, and get a prize pack . . . thank you farm managers for saving my house from a million broken up plastic eggs and doing the landfills some good by recycling!!

Of course, the Easter bunny was there making the rounds - but as you can see in the pics, he did not draw the attention that the special visitors of the day did - Dora and Diego. I feel that I can say with almost certainty that this was the happiest Marlie Katherine has been in her entire life!!! And while Samantha was excited to see Dora and Diego (not so much the bunny of the hour) - she wasn't as confident as Marlie about hanging out with them.

Then as I was chatting with one of the farm organizers, I learned that they were creating a Birthday Barn to be open this summer and you could do parties with hay rides, and naturally, a visit from a character of your choice . . . who do you think overheard this conversation and listened hard enough to report to me (ALL DAY LONG) that she would be having her birthday party at the farm and that Dora and Diego would be there . . . we will see . . .

As we were cleaning up the eggs to leave for the Easter bunny to hide, Marlie and I had a talk about Easter and why we celebrated it. She remembered some from last year, which was amazing! We are celebrating the start of spring and new life - that's why we use eggs, to symbolize the new life of so many animals that come from eggs (I'll wait til she's a little older to explain the Greek fertility part of it all that ties into the eggs). Grandma Leslie also bought a book to talk about Jesus and Easter - so we chatted a little about that as well . . . given our geographic location of the Bible belt, I would be doing her a great disservice if we didn't at least mention things like God and Jesus since it's what 99% of her friends will be talking about as she gets older (ok - let's be real EVERYONE but her!). Whatever the reason - I'm not into celebrating holidays for no reason, so I think it's very important to give her the reasons why we do what we do - whether they mesh in the Bible belt or not . . . .though I haven't really come up with a solid answer to the chocolate bunny . . .