Happy Easter!

I almost had a heart-attack on Tuesday when I realized that Emi had BOTH Wednesday and Thursday off of school. It was kind of like a trial-run for Spring Break and I wasn't at all prepared for it. Plus it was raining and that didn't help at all. Dumb weather!

I had been trying to decide if I wanted to try dyeing Easter Eggs this year and the fact that I had to be creative two days in a row pretty much decided that for me. Yeah, Easter Eggs! I know people think I'm a great mom but I try to avoid this type of stuff as much as possible. It just wears on my nerves, much like thinking about cooking with my kids does. *shiver* But there is another part of me that wants my children to experience as many American/Canadian cultural things as possible which is why I stuff turkeys into my little convection oven at Thanksgiving and take hours to make cookies because I can only bake 7 at a time, etc.

My mom has faithfully sent me Easter Egg dyeing kits every year so I brought them out from their hidden corners in the cabinets and re-read the instructions. Amazingly, finding white eggs was the most difficult part of the project. I actually had to go to three different grocery stores to find them since brown eggs are more common here.

Around 10am on Wednesday morning, I started assembling all of the supplies while the girls excitedly looked on and once Chikara went off to work, we settled ourselves around the table and got to work. I had boiled four eggs for each of them and I had 8 different colors of dyes, 3 pages of stickers, two white crayons, 3 special color markers just for eggs (!), two different kinds of sparkly glue and then other assorted shiny decorations. I set Natsuki in her high chair with a cookie and off we went.

Here are the girls dyeing their eggs.

Natsuki didn't get to dye eggs, so she "drew" a picture instead!

Once they had finished dyeing their fourth egg, the first egg was dry so we moved on to "decorating" which was their most favorite part. I had little egg cups for holding soft-boiled eggs when you eat them so I brought those out to hold the eggs while they were working on them. They all did so well.

An hour and a half later, we had a finished product. They were so excited.

Taking a snack break after a job well done!

I decorated some eggs, too. I didn't boil mine but once they were decorated, I blew out the inside (more difficult than I had remembered) and hung them up in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. Sorry for the mess but I wanted to get a picture before Natsuki and Sakura woke up from their naps!

I was really pleased with how the day went although by the time Chikara came home and the kids went to bed I was exhausted. I fell asleep on the couch at 8:30pm, woke up at 11:30pm and moved to my bed and slept until 8am the next morning! It's such hard work to be a good mom!

Happy Easter!