easter reflections, one week later

For the first few days we were in Florida, the weather was cold and windy. By the latter half of the week, it started to warm up and by the time we were due to leave on Friday, the temperature had finally reached the high 70's.  So we did what any irresponsible fun-loving parent who had a two-day drive before them and whose children are due back in school on Monday morning would do.  We scrapped our plans to leave on Friday and instead decided to leave on Saturday.



But by Saturday, the temperature had reached the 80's and my sister, Eileen and her son, Tommy, were planning to fly in that very same night from Michigan - and how could we leave when they were coming in just a few hours?  So we scrapped our plans to leave on Saturday and decided to leave on Sunday.  But we didn't make those plans until Saturday late afternoon, once we'd already said goodbye to Mom and Jim and drove back to our hotel to checkout.

All in all, it was a good thing we decided to stay. Because we forgot to lock our door, the Easter Bunny not only came in to our hotel room and hid eggs while we were sleeping, he also hid eggs all around the hotel pool for the guests to find on Easter morning.



The best part of Easter for me, was watching our children who had done a fair job of finding a large number of eggs around the pool - realize that a lot of the children hadn't found any eggs - so unprovoked, they took every last egg from their baskets and re-hid them so that the younger kids who had no eggs, would have something to find. And on the way out of the hotel, Carolyn took some money that she'd saved up and brought with her on the trip to buy a souvenir, instead decide to put it in a golden egg that she then handed to one of the housekeepers as we were leaving. Every so often, we're handed an exceptionally proud moment in parenting. These were two of them.

Then we drove back to my mom and Jim's place to say SURPRISE to my sister Eileen and my nephew Tom ...



.... and it turns out the Easter Bunny had swung by there, too, and left the children brand new sand pails filled with 50 pounds of candy. I'm not sure how he knew we were coming, but that Easter Bunny sure is a tricky one!



Earlier in the week, my mother had bought hats for the girls, some silk flowers and a glue gun, so they could affix various decorations for a personalized Easter bonnet.  Since my mother's mother, my children's great-grandmother, was a milliner at the turn of the 20th century - this was a fun activity for them to do from a heritage perspective. Carolyn's hat turned out very dignified with a simple bow and flowers...



Whereas Elizabeth glued a dozen plastic eggs to her hat and adorned it with stuffed bunnies and a wind up chick.



It suits her perfectly.