Happy Easter everyone, one day late. We had a great day although it started far too early. Darren woke the boys and I up at 5:15 AM. I was barely functioning and Darren had already been up and ready for Mass. The boys took after me yesterday morning. I did bribe them with their Easter baskets, which I put together after 11 the night before. They didn't want to get up until I threatened to eat all the candy myself. They were up and down the stairs in no time. I may just use that as bribery if we ever have to get up early for Mass again.

Rex found his basket right away. He was super excited about it and forgot that it still dark.
I hid Stephen's basket on his chair at the table. It was pushed in so he had a bit of trouble locating it. The fact that his chair was pushed in should have been a hint because he NEVER pushes his chair in. :)

Blase only took a few minutes to figure out that I hid his in a hard place. There is only one hard place in the whole living room. I had purposely left a blanket out so that I could tell him to pick up the blanket if he needed a hint.

Poor Cormac! Do you see the look on his face?? Well, there is a funny story behind this picture. He walked and ran around the living room, but couldn't find his basket. He finally turned to me and was going to cry. I told him to just keep looking. He said he hated Easter and ran upstairs. I followed him upstairs and showed him the picture I had taken. I asked him what he saw. He said a sad, grumpy boy. I finally had to point out what was behind him. He got excited, ran back downstairs and still couldn't find it. Poor guy...it took him another few moments to locate the basket, but it was ALL worth it.

SEE I FOUND IT!!!

Brech, on the other hand, was NOT PLEASED to be woke up. He didn't want anything to with Easter baskets or breakfast. He has a hard time finding the right side of the bed to wake up on.

Here we are ready to head to church. It was 6:30 in the morning and all were in good spirits at this point. It was neat to be able to leave for church at dawn. We talked about Jesus resurrecting at dawn and they could see the sun coming up over the horizon. Precious memories!

We had our first outdoor Easter egg hunt. I was the "Easter bunny" and hid all three dozen (minus 2 eggs). Here are a few pictures of the boys making memories.

Brech's first egg he found. He has this habit of picking up eggs and throwing them at the egg carton. Quite a few good eggs were broken thanks to him.

I FOUND ONE!! HA - I FOUND TWO!!!

MOM I FOUND MY EGG!!!!!

Blase was our chief egg finder. We could not locate one of the eggs for two complete rounds around the house. I had forgotten where I had hid it, but Blase finally found it for us.

Is there an egg in here? MOM I can't find the egg! Mom, where is the egg? MOM!!!!
He was quite proud of himself when he finally found the egg.

The last egg of the hunt. I had hid Darren's special all-the-dyes egg where only he would be able to find it. It took him 5 minutes to find it and then Brech had the glory of taking it down. I really thought he would have caught on when I said he couldn't open the garage doors. The boys were quite excited about the egg I hid under our concrete goose. The goose that laid the multi-color pastel egg. It doesn't quite roll off the tongue like the golden egg does.

Traditional Bestgen Kipping - Two people pick their eggs. The first person (we did youngest) hits his pointed end to the other person's pointed end. One or both ends will break. Turn eggs over and the second person gets to "kip" their egg to the first person's. If a pointed end is broken on one end and the rounded end on the other person's egg then they kip the unbroken ends together to determine the winner. The winner then moves on to the another competitor. The winner of the day is the person whose survives all the rounds. It takes only one unbroken end to win. Above was Brech verses Rex - winner BRECH

Next contest - Cormac Michael egg verses Brech's egg - winner BRECH

Third kipping contest Stephen verses Brecher the Wrecker. Winner - BRECH THE UNDEFEATED

Brech won this contest too, although somewhere in here one of his ends did break. Brech's egg also survived my egg and Darren's egg as well. He was the overall winner for the night.

And what do you do with the winning egg??? THROW IT AT THE EGG CARTON! So much for the winning egg. It takes a wrecker to bring down an egg as strong as that!

After our mini-contest, the boys took the rest of the eggs and kipping all the ends. They had fun and now I don't have to crack them to make devilled eggs. Speaking of that - I had already made a dozen into devilled eggs earlier in the day. YUMMY!!!!