Searching, Coloring and Eating

Nicole and I filled the kids baskets with a few eggs full of candy and a color by number for each of them. We were so happy to find a perfect picture for each kid and the fact that it was coloring instead of messy painting - AWESOME!!! While we got started on dinner they all colored away. The kids dove right into coloring and before we could give instructions to Isaac he had taken one of his markers and connected all the numbers. He thought he was doing a dot to dot! It was funny. In the picture below (which is blurry but all I had of them coloring) it looks like he is still a little baffled and is staring at his markers instead :-) Don't worry, he did eventually figure it out and join the fun!

Time for the easter egg hunt!! Brock and Shane hid the eggs (while Nicole and I were cooking) and the kids ran all over the yard in a frenzy! We let Isaac out first (20 second early) then Maggie then the three older kids. The pictures below crack me up because as you can see Isaac was pretty la-de-do about it all so his 20 second lead didn't do much for him. Maggie was excited but not real serious. Now the last group that was another story. Their faces tell it all - it was GAME ON the minute they were let out the door!

Maggie is pretty excited about her find. Watch out Liam, Madison is about to push you right out of the way. Who knew easter eggs could do such things to a kid! :-) (just in case you think I am serious, she didn't push him. Grab out of his hand maybe but push no) Isaac needed quite a bit of help to spot the eggs, but was thrilled each time he found one as if he had done it all himself.Finally time for the meal! It was DELICIOUS (if I do say so myself). We made Turkey (followed The Pioneer Woman's recipe), made a brine (by tweaking the recipe a bit - omitting the rosemary, adding a bulb of garlic, a bay leaf and doing 1/2 broth 1/2 water). We also made ham (a first time for both of us), garlic mashed potatoes (also from The Pioneer Woman), gravy, fruit salad, corn and rolls. Everything turned out good except the turkey took longer than we expected. We had everything else out and ready so we sat down and enjoyed our meal - without the turkey. Later we snacked on the turkey and of course will have plenty of turkey sandwiches!