We had a wonderful, beautiful Easter. Our Easter celebrations actually spanned two full, glorious weekends packed full of fun events. Spring has arrived in our area and we are loving the blooms, flowering trees, chirping birds, and perfect, 70 degree temperatures. I loved pulling out everyone’s spring clothes and stuffing (and hiding!) Easter baskets. We got to include Suelen and her friend in our Easter celebrations and then we closed out the wonderful weekend with family.

The weekend before Easter, we dressed in our Easter best and headed to Caroline’s new preschool for a massive egg hunt! It was an absolutely gorgeous day, so of course, first we had to take 1000 pictures of Caroline. She was so proud of her Easter basket!

Next we headed into the classrooms for the egg hunt…and by hunt, the eggs were literally all over the place. Not hidden whatsoever. It was adorable though because Caroline actually got the concept and did not focus on getting and opening just one egg. She did get a wee bit distracted by the baby dolls in the classroom, though!

Afterwards, we let her play on the playground while Mike and I chatted with the other parents. One of my favorite thing about this school is that they have lots of green grassy hilly space for romping, sandboxes for digging, and great tunnels for hiding! This kind of play space is unusual in our area.

Caroline didn’t want any other kids getting too close to “her” baby and kept running back to check on Vivi…look at her grabbing those little baby fingers!

Before we left, she asked to head over to the Craft Table and enjoyed gluing down the tissue paper on her egg craft.

Such a fun morning! We all crashed when we got home…because then after naptime, we headed over to Ellie’s house for a second egg hunt du jour, this time with her best daycare pals.

Here they are, post-hunt:

Here are 3 of the 4, scoping out each other’s loot:

Caroline quickly learned that these eggs had lots of goodies inside…she would open each one and yell “cooookie!!” regardless of what was inside it. At one point, Mike told her that she had eaten enough candy and no more…so before he could take it, she shoved the entire contents of the egg into her mouth. Is this my kid or what?!?

Here’s our girl, focused on the mission at hand:

Along with her buddies:

Vivi Kate enjoyed herself, too! She plopped right on into her friend Charlie’s bumbo seat, which we wound up borrowing because it fits her chunky thighs way better than the two bumbos we have at home!

Vivi especially enjoyed the sisterly squeezes that were in abundance!

The next day, we visited the National Zoo, because Caroline wanted to see “turtles and fish.” We of course had to find a few Easter eggs before we left…AND wear our new favorite Easter shoes…

And here she is after insisting we change the white shoes for her new red shoes from Ellie…

The next weekend–Easter weekend, we started the festivities early by hosting a little playdate for her daycare besties. Here are all the kiddos devouring French toast casserole before Finny got the best of it:

As you can see by the tears, Finny definitely snuck in there and helped himself! Auggh…

Saturday morning, Caroline had her first soccer practice! Mike and I took turns carrying her around the field 🙂 Just kidding…sort of, ha! She did actually kick the ball and enjoyed running around (for a few seconds). Her coach, Coach Ollie, is actually fantastic with these little guys. Most of all, she enjoyed the playground time at the end!

After soccer, we headed to yet another Easter egg hunt at her daycare friend Lorna’s house. Lots of sweet neighborhood kids came so it was an adventure in sharing toys. One brought this little  foot pedal rocket ship, which Caroline loved, and we launched little nerf rockets way up in the air over and over. We invited Caroline’s very first friend Fiona, and all three little ladies had a ball eating allllll the Easter candy, frosting and decorating cookies, and hunting for eggs.

During nap, I headed to DryBar to get my hair blown out for our big Date Night!

After nap, we headed to Kelly’s house for Easter egg dyeing, which went way better than last year. And I got to drink champagne this time, whoo hoo! Mike and I raced off to Date Night and Suelen watched our little ladies.

We took the Water Taxi from Old Town to National Harbor and it was a beautiful evening:

Dinner was at Succotash and while the food wasn’t amazing, we had a wonderful time together. Then we came home and the Easter Bunny hid everyone’s baskets.

Easter morning, bright and early, I got Caroline dressed and she ran into my room, grabbed my old camera and said, “Mommy!! Cheese! Then find eggs, ok???”

It was a picture perfect Easter Sunday! And check out our dogwood! We took a family selfie, which Vivi did NOT enjoy…

Suelen to the rescue to grab this shot. All I wanted was one family shot at Easter!

We picked up Suelen’s sweet friend Elis and brought her back to our house for the great Easter basket hunt and basket opening inside, followed by more Easter egg hunts in the backyard.

And I think we found all but 2 of those eggs…not too shabby! Maybe they will reappear for next year’s hunt??

After all that hunting, Caroline napped hard, while I made Vivi Kate pose in her Easter finest:

Then we headed to Ed and Susan’s for a wonderful Easter dinner feast, egg hunt, and quality family time. Ed, Susan, Lee, Holly, and Raul all did such a nice job putting together the evening and we all had a great time. Ed and Susan gave Caroline and VIvi some wonderful Easter books, too, that we have been reading nightly ever since. So sweet!

It is so crazy the difference a year makes from last year–Caroline and Roman are only 7 months apart and already they seem closer. The fact that they can both walk, talk, and play–that makes a big difference. There was a lot of nice sharing going on, and for this little lady, that is a big deal!

We all plopped down right in Ed and Susan’s foyer so that Vivi could practice her standing skills–which always make her smile!

Her face lights up when she sees Caroline. It is so sweet.

A few bribes and promises of snacks gets your this golden shot of these two little bunnies…worth it!! Check ot Caroline’s face…

Happy Easter, everyone!