Every year I feel like we do a million things around Easter! I think it’s such a pretty time of the year that it just calls for more celebrating 🙂
I have learned over the years that hard boiling eggs for decorating just isn’t in my skill set. We keep it SIMPLE around here when it comes to egg decorating! Our church does an egg hunt that requires real eggs so we did a TON this year! It was so fun to have Tess included…it was also a good test run to see how she’d do with a booster seat. She’s def NOT ready yet for it!
Kye did one that said “Make America Great Again” b/c we thought Aunt Casey would be annoyed by it ha!
Daddy always wins for most creative 🙂
The Sunday prior to Easter we had our church egg hunt right after services and our neighborhood egg hunt. I really wanted Tess to experience one of them and the neighborhood one just worked out better in its timing (it started near the end of nap time). So we decided I’d take big kids to church hunt, Zach would take Tess home for nap, then big kids and I would get home and we’d all go to neighborhood hunt. It was a busy…but super fun day!
These group shots crack me up. Can you find Kye?!?! He’s the one with the picture perfect smile haha. Kid is well trained and Britt is clearly picking up those skills too!
My big kids!
Our neighborhood is really stepping it up with some super fun events!
Tess is the youngest kid I’ve had who figured out candy is in the eggs 😉
Girl is straight up hardcore!
I’m so so so so super thankful that we had SUCH a fun Easter-themed weekend the weekend prior to Easter. Because the Thursday night before Easter? Tess started SOBBING at 10:00. Like not-normal crying. I know people think we are mega hardcore about sleep training. And we are. But when your baby is crying in a way or at a time they don’t typically cry, you go get ’em! Zach went in and was so sweet holding and cuddling her back to sleep.
But within 20-30 min we were back getting her because she had puked. I’m not a vomit type person. Kye and Britt have very, very rarely thrown up. But Tess, I think, is gonna be the puke kid. She had a ROUGH night on Christmas Eve remember? This time it was FOR SURE a stomach virus. We could tell a difference between the time prior and rather than continually washing everything over and over we just decided to keep her awake. She cuddled with us on the coach and threw up every 20-30 min (almost on the dot) from 10:40-1:20. It was pitiful. Zach was so sweet b/c he felt so bad for her but at the same time it made it even worse because every time she started throwing up he kept saying “omg I feel so bad. Poor baby” which made ME feel even worse! She def got some spoiled cuddles (and got the privilege of being our only child to ever see an episode of Survivor haha!).
I told Zach to go to bed and I laid on the couch with her. I couldn’t sleep but it’s the closest I’ve ever come to co-sleeping with one of my babies 😉 She was so sweet and it was also funny b/c she didn’t really want me to touch her. She laid on top of me and turned over on her back and basically treated me like a mattress!
We kept it low-key the next couple of days. It went through EVERYONE in our family…except for me! And I know this may sound bad but really if you’re whole family has to get sick it really does go SO much smoother if Mama avoids getting it…right?!?! If I’d gotten it to we could have had to just throw in the towel haha!
Kye never actually threw up but felt really off and really sick. Britt had some diarrhea but also never threw up. After me, she probably had it the least. Zach got it BAD. Then it made the rounds to the entire family. Casey, Jordan, Carter, Mr. Rusty (even though we weren’t around ANY of them!)…and even some friends of ours who stayed at our house a week after (which I mean I lysoled EVERYTHING so it’s not possible they got it from us right?!). Super strange bug!
Easter morning we wanted to do things as normal as possible. I wasn’t sure how everyone would wake up feeling so I figured we’d go forward as we normally would and then just feel it out as they woke up!
The Easter bunny did good!
The Easter Bunny always hides an egg in the kids Easter shoes…and he always hides an egg that has their name on it. Well. He dropped the ball on it and Kye had Tess’s name egg. He was NOT happy about it!
Notice the puke protectors on her bed haha
Tess’s Easter shoes were mine from when I was a baby…and she got Kye’s egg 😉
Easter morning with the tummy bug…classic
Here’s a video of the egg hunt (excuse the boxes in the dining room…furniture for our new back porch space!)
And a video of seeing their baskets!
Happy Easter from the Parkers!
Usually on Easter we go to church and then go to Mema’s to celebrate with the family. We had to cancel on going this year, for obvious reasons. We all just stayed home and rested.
Since we couldn’t be there Mr. Rusty FaceTimed us and tell us Happy Easter! Carter had spent the night at their house because Casey and Jordan were at a wedding the night prior until late. Casey and Jordan went straight to their house after the wedding and celebrated Carter’s Easter that morning at Mr Rusty’s and Mrs. Charlotte’s house. The “Easter Bunny” had hidden a special egg for Carter…with an ultrasound picture inside!!! It was super cute and it worked out so well b/c I was TRULY surprised at their announcement. I was so distracted with puke that I wasn’t thinking clearly haha! Everyone else found a special prize egg at Mema’s house with the photo inside, I hate we missed the big family announcement (and how cute that our family has now had an announcement at Halloween, Christmas and Easter!!!) but it meant a lot that they took the time to FaceTime us so we could be included 🙂
*** I typically blog behind “real time” and it doesn’t usually cause any issues, but in this case it makes things harder. I wanted to talk about the Baby Bacon pregnancy announcement when it happened as it was such a special moment for everyone. I talked with Casey a couple days ago about how to handle blogging about this as I wanted to make sure to do whatever made her the most comfortable. Sadly this past week (May 9th) at Casey’s regular 16 week check up they found out their sweet baby no longer had a heartbeat. It’s been very, very painful for Casey and Jordan and all of us who love them so much. Please keep them both in your prayers as this is a long path of hurt and healing and I know it’s one of those things that there isn’t any way to help them other than pray. If you know them in “real life” they are wanting privacy at this point but a simple text to let them know you’re praying I’m sure would be appreciated. ***
Even though we couldn’t be at the family gathering you know G-Mama couldn’t resist brining little baskets for us all!
I felt SO BAD that the kids missed out on the egg hunt. I went to Walmart while everyone was resting and picked up some Gatorade and other sick essentials…and also grabbed some treats and goodies to set aside. Since the next week was Spring Break for the kids, I planned an epic backyard egg hunt for them!
I hid a TON of eggs and tried to make it as fair/fun as possible. I put ones with candy in them on the ground. Easy to see. Easy to grab. Obviously those are the ones I was planning for Tess. Then I put one on each side of the yard up higher that had $1 bill in it. And I wrote little coupons in several of them and divided them up evenly on each side of the yard. I also placed those higher up/harder to find. I told the kids how many eggs they could each get AND told them about the strategy: pick higher/harder eggs and you get coupons for prizes/money…pick easy to find/on the ground eggs and you get candy. I had the big kids start on separate sides of the yard to make sure they each found one of the money eggs 🙂 It worked out really awesome and was SO FUN!!!
(again, pardon the porch mess…finished product is coming soon!)
Here’s a video of the race for the eggs!
All about that strategy!
The most fun part was opening all the eggs. It was SO FUNNY how Kye pretty much had ALL the coupons and Britt and Tess had all the candy. Even funnier was that Britt ruined all her candy within a 5 min time frame by smashing the melted chocolate all over everything. I love this video of opening the eggs…you can tell we had such a blast!
Kye especially loved the hunt and already asked if we can make it a yearly thing!
Sickness aside, we still had a wonderful Easter! We won’t let a tummy bug ruin our time 🙂
My work has been featured on Love What Matters, Today Parenting and Babywise.Life. I'm also honored to be a member of the Babywise Friendly Blog Network.
You can read more about our family on my About Me page. Also be sure to follow along with me on Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest!
- What I’m Gifting My Family: 2024 - November 21, 2024
- Effective Parenting Tips to Discipline a 5 Year Old Child - September 24, 2024
- Happy 9th Birthday to My Daughter – Letter to Tess from Mom - August 26, 2024
