Twas the Morn Before Easter

And all the through the town, egg hunts were happening as the rain poured down . . . Yes, it was a wet morning for Easter searches, but our first destination occurred indoors. And at shortly after 9 a.m. Now to most people, that's fairly late . . . to us, oh my carrots!!! That's early! Our karate school planted 330 eggs, mostly in plain sight, then lined up various age groups. G$'s age group boasted a lot of kids . . . they got to find 11 eggs each and one special, talked-up, GOLDEN egg! Well, the kids found the eggs, then eagerly cracked open the mysterious eggs of gold and found . . . nothing! :) Our karate school owner grabbed the wrong box of eggs and set out the empties from an earlier hunt, lol! He found the correct box, and swapped empties for quarter-filled wonders actually intended as prizes for the crowd of kids :)


An even funnier moment arrived, when B's group lined up (Gab could have participated, but chose to sit the hunt out). There were far fewer kids in B's group and they each got to find . . . 27 eggs!!! You should have seen G$'s jaw drop! :) In the end, all the kids still there waiting for siblings were invited to take another look through the gym and see if there were any stray eggs. They found plenty, so everyone was happy--not that they really would have cared either way. It's just fun to find the eggs, it doesn't matter too much how many they get. 

From there, we took a splashy little walk through the Target parking lot to get my nephew a birthday gift. I didn't realize we were partying until I got a text from my mom noting "donuts to celebrate in tow." This delayed our arrival at Easter festivities the second. In fact, my mom got there first with my brothers, my nephews, and my niece. Boy was that a fun at-our-church reunion :)

The girls immediately wanted to show the boys where they meet for church and youth group. It turned out, that worked perfectly because the egg hunt (remember those thousand plus eggs we stuffed earlier in the week?) couldn't be held outside, and instead occurred at 20 minute intervals in the youth room! My brothers and oldest nephew got to volunteer their egg hiding skills along with our girls. They set up three separate egg hunts! The first, our boys got to scour the room looking for treats. The second, my niece, in her alleged "first-ever" public egg hunt got her chance to collect plastic prizes and hand-stuffed treats. 

See that really high ledge under the sound booth above the garage door? That's where my very tall brother decided to hide eggs for the little children to find :) I saw more than one super happy baby getting hoisted above dad's head to pluck eggs from the ledge!

At first, G$ saw she'd missed the hunt he and his bro just swept, and planned to give up some of his treats to balance out her bag. But, Maga was willing to stick around for the second hunt, and G$ gave his cousin an assist on finding the good eggs :)

Our four boys found a Foosball table to keep themselves busy while the littler ones checked out their egg hunt prizes.

The rest of the morning, they played games, did crafts, and the bigger kids helped clean-up some and then we played four-square-in-the-air (I even got invited to the fun, lol, which seemed to have sketchy at best rules for game play).

After some Find-the-Pizza hunting, my mom and her carload arrived with lunch and the promised donuts. After a loud and laughter-filled meal, we sang the Happy song to Mr. A. He was about to nosh that donut without candle-clearance and mean, old Auntie J made him wait for proper birthday procedures to ensue :) 

So, what do you do with more teenagers than toddlers filling the rooms to the rafters? Board games! The kids settled into groups . . . a little Jenga for Maga and Miss G, which later turned into Hullabaloo for the two Little Gs, Jamaica for three boys, and LIFE for the rest.

When Hullabaloo concluded, the two littlests decided they wanted to put on a show for us. Minutes later, Mr. and Miss Fancy emerged (from separate dressing rooms) to show us their style. My camera was so slow, the tiara dropped in front of Miss G's eyes, right as the shutter finally decided to click--hilarious!

When everyone left and we finished dinner, some chores, and some homework . . . I fell asleep! Sound asleep on the couch at 7 p.m. A text from my husband awoke me from my nap 45 minutes later. Now this would normally seem like a "hey, just go to bed," time for most people perhaps, but around here, that's kind of like mid-afternoon :) 

Remember, I'd been up since before 9!! Lol :) 

BTW, I'm not reading back over this because, once again today, I fell asleep for a nap (this time before noon). There's no edits today, so hopefully I did okay on the first run. Oh my, and there's still Easter to blog . . .