Easter Egg Hunt

I'm sitting here typing this evening while Ella's friend Nick, who is a few years older, and Ella are peacefully building lego spaceships, and reflecting out loud how they are sharing the Legos together. Ahhhh, sometimes I am so very present to how much we have arrived at older-kid-dom.

Easter Sunday was a fun-filled day, with early-morning-tearing-into-presents (thanks, Grandma Shirley!) and our usual pancakes for breakfast, followed by a walk through overcast skies and bird-song filled forests to our neighbor Quinn's house for the long-awaited Egg Hunt. Ella has been begging to go for days.

We were the first kids there, and we played on the swingset while awaiting more hunters and for all the eggs to be hidden. When everyone arrived, we posed the kids for the usual group photo, and then sent them running, rummaging through grass and shrubs, irises, garden hoses, decks, potted plants, and along fences, searching for the rainbow-colored eggs. The hiders did a phenomenal job, placing an egg the exact color of a garden hose in among the coils, for example. Well done, ladies! While the kids scrambled, the adults milled about on the porch, imbibing cinnamon rolls, muffins, quiche, coffee, and tea.

Once the kids were all finished with finding the eggs, the scavenger hunt began, where the kids are sent all over the property in search of more clues, for example, "When you climb the wall, you're very tall, and can see it all." The clues eventually led to the side door of the house, which opened into a room full of easter baskets with a stuffed animal, some candy, and a balloon. My favorite part of the scavenger hunt is how the kids take off like a herd of spooking deer once they read the clue and realize where they need to go!

After a little more chatting, we began our journey home, easter baskets, hard-boiled eggs, and demolished sheep cinnamon rolls in tow in the bike trailer, and were graced with the amazing view of our flat, what with a cloud-mottled sky and rich, green, velvety hills. Spring is amazing, and every April, I am reminded of why this is the month that first inspired me to live here someday. Magic magic magic.