Happy Easter - Part 2

After Marc followed the clues and found the Easter baskets, the kids got to look in them.Samantha got a cool ribbon twirler/waver thingy. She had so much fun waving it all around.
Marc and his loot from the "Easter Bunny".
Samantha had her loot from the "Easter Bunny".
After some Easter basket fun, we got ready to go to church. My Mom bought Marc his Easter outfit and my Grandma bought Samantha hers. They both looked SO adorable.

Samantha looked like a grown-up girl. I swear she aged 2 years in about a minute, just long enough to get her dressed.
Marc looked like a young executive.
My SUPER cute kiddos!!!!After church we headed over to my Mom's house. She does an egg hunt around her house for the kids. She puts filled plastic eggs leading upstairs to where their baskets are. (yes, my kiddos are spoiled)

Samantha checking our her loot from Grandma.
Marc got a Zhu Zhu pet in his basket. He had fun watching it go.
It was a great day of family, food, smiles, and giggles. :-)

Happy Easter - "The Amazing Basket Race" 4/4/10

Every year we try to "hide" the kids' Easter baskets. One year we had a trail of plastic, filled, eggs and one year we had a trail of jelly beans leading to his basket. This year we decided to make him follow clues to find it. Daddy Marc had the idea of calling it "The Amazing Basket Race" (after "The Amazing Race") since Marc likes the show so much. His first egg was sitting in the bathroom when he woke up. Here is the race he had to go on:

Clue #1:
"You've hunted for eggs, now hunt for clues. Your basket is 7 clues away, but only if you can solve the riddles. Your first clue is easy....look in the box that REFRIGERATES your food.Clue #2:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16 LOOK IT UP, it's true (you've got a Bible).
Clue #3:
You're out of SCHOOL for a week. But to get your next clue, you'll have to let the cat out of the BAG.
Clue #4:
we'd like To eat At this location But sometimes there's Lots of stuff covering Every part of it; We also do crafts here sometimes.If you find this spot, look underneath it (you like to hide there anyway).
Clue #5:
"Don't be alarmed," he said. "You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, 'He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.' " Mark 16:6-7 You'll need your Dad's help to look this one up (he has a Bible too, ya know).

Samantha wanted to help Marc find his next clue. :)

Clue #6:
Let's find your next clue. Excellent builders Get to have a lot of fun putting together these blocks for Others to knock over and tear apart.
Clue #7:
Look around.....you've arrived!!
FOUND IT!!!!!
We had fun creating the clues and even more fun watching Marc find them and try to figure them out. He did a GREAT job figuring them out. Now the real question.....how do we top this next year??? ;-)

Eggs, Eggs, and More Eggs

Since we went to 3 Easter egg hunts, the kids ended up with lots of eggs and lots of candy!
These are all the eggs the kids got from the egg hunt at the church.....and this is the candy that came in it.
This is all the candy the kids got from downtown and Barnes & Noble.
This is the loot the kiddos got from all 3 egg hunts....
and oh so many eggs!!
We had fun at the Easter egg hunts this year. I enjoyed watching Marc not let other kids walk all over him ;) and watching Samantha learn about collecting eggs.

Easter Egg Hunt #3 4/3/10

On Saturday, we headed to another Easter egg hunt. ;) We heard about this one at a somewhat local church. It was free so we decided to go check it out. Samantha decided to look cute son the way there. ;)It turns out that this one was more of an egg scramble than an egg hunt. The church asked us to register (probably to get our address to send us stuff. ;) ) While we were waiting in line I thought "Wow, they have lots of pretty flowers already!". It turns out that they weren't flowers, they were eggs!! Very cool looking!!!!!
After registration, we all headed into the sanctuary for an Easter drama. After the drama, all the kids split up into their appropriate age group. There were 4 different sections of grass filled with eggs. Luckily Marc and Samantha were in the same group. Get ready, get set......
GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Samantha remembered from yesterday what to do. :) The group they were in was infant-1st grade. So, I gathered a small pile of eggs in front of Samantha for her to put in her basket. All those older kids were running and grabbing them faster then the little toddlers could get them.
Marc was one of those older kids. ;) He did great holding his own with the other kids. :)
They got a lot of eggs. After our area was clear there were still eggs in our areas so a lot of the people went over there to get more. We didn't, we figured we had enough already. We saw some kids (middle school age) come out of their area in the woods with trash bags full!! The church said they filled 6,800 eggs!!!
After the egg scramble was done, the "carnival" part started. There was free popcorn, drinks, and hot dogs. There were also about 5 "midway" games for the kids to play. The kids received redemption tickets from each game to turn in for prizes.
They had the traditional duck pond......
in this one Marc had to use the Air Zooka to puff air and blow balloons off the table.....
and the Bozo Bucket Ball toss to name just a few.here were several costumed "friends" walking around. There was an Easter chick.....
the Pink Panther.....
and Scooby Doo. Samantha loves watching Scooby on tv with Marc......
but she didn't want to go anywhere near him. Whenever one of the costumed people came close to her, she clung on to me for dear life! Wonder what we are going to do in Disneyland this summer??? ;)
There was also a bounce house. Marc had fun inside. Samantha wanted to go in, but she was too short so we stood her on the edge outside the netting.


We spent about 2 hours there and it wore Samantha out! ;)
Not Marc....he spent some of the time in the car looking in his eggs.
This was the best of all 3 of the egg hunts we went to. All the eggs the kids got had 2-3 pieces of candy in them, fun games, fun egg scramble, lots of friendly people, and lots of smiles and giggles from our kiddos.

Easter Egg Hunt #2 4/2/10

After we left the egg hunt downtown, we headed to the egg hunt at Barnes & Noble that we had signed up for. Definitely better than downtown....really nice in fact!!
They had it set up so there were 2 different hunts; 1 for age 3 and under and 1 for 4 and older. They hid candy filled eggs all around the kids' section. Samantha's was first. She was ready and eager to start!
For the younger group that pretty much just laid the eggs all around. It took Samantha a few eggs to get the hang of it......
She kept asking us to open each one as she found them.
She quickly got the hang of it. ;)
She was all excited about her basket full with 1--15 eggs!
"Look what's in my basket!"
She was SO excited about all of the eggs she found. :)
While we waited for Marc's hunt to get set up, we sat down and looked at what was in the eggs Samantha found.
As we opened each egg she said "ooohhh". It was so cute. We gave in and let her have a piece before we had dinner. ;)
After what seemed like an agonizingly long time, it was Marc's turn for his hunt. (Daddy Marc, along with some other parents, actually went in and helped to hide the eggs).
Marc had no problem getting into the swing of things finding eggs. ;)


He was pretty proud of his findings too. :)
Since we sat down and looked at Samantha's eggs, we sat down and looked in Marc's eggs. They both got some nice stuff in them. :)
We really enjoyed the hunts at Barnes & Noble. I liked the fact that it was broken down in age groups and it was indoors, since we never know what weather is going to be like on Easter in Michigan. ;)