Hippity Hoppity Who

Happy Easter and Happy April my bloggy friends! I lost last week to what I call a down-cycle; basically where you feel down for no discernible reason and you have to either fake it, fight it, or ride it out. Last week was the rare "ride it out" version and I dealt with my unprompted bout of emotional malaise by re-reading my favorite books, thinking about doing yoga, and lashing out at the one person who loves me most in the world. Productive!

Oddly enough, last week was actually the most successful week I've ever had career-wise, with two of my cases approved by the Commission, one making national headlines, and the other being filed in federal court and I was very bleh and hide-in-my-office-y about it, and, well, bleh. I'm glad those feelings (or non-feelings, really) are gone.

Easter baby spoiler alert

Part of what chased the blahs away was the start of the Easter festivities. Thursday was the egg hunt at the girls' school and JP was able to make it over just in time for Cora's class to begin. As his text explains, it "started well, got worse, got better, then worse." So, a toddler-cycle!

Once Cora understood the eggs were for taking, she decided to take them from a lot of her friends' baskets.

Then she had to give them back so she lay across the sidewalk in protest before finding her own cache of eggs to stand over and growl at anyone who came near. That sentence captures 90% of Cora at this time.

All in all, I think she really loved the experience.

My parents drove over on Saturday for Easter weekend and took the big kids to their play that afternoon (they gave the kids season tickets to the children's play series at Casa Manana, which is amazing, so they took JP and my tickets and we got an afternoon at home with a sleeping toddler; everyone was winning).

I baked two layers of the greatest carrot cake in all the land, hand grating the 2 cups of carrots while wondering why I haven't yet bought a food processor, and eating all the leftover cream cheese frosting out of the mixing bowl until I finally flung the bowl into the sink and turned the water on because there was way too much leftover frosting and I don't have any self control.

We went to our favorite hamburger place that night (Rodeo Goat!) and then tucked the kids in bed so the Easter Bunny could come. In furtherance of my mom's tradition, the Bunny gives all the kids their summer swim suits and coordinating accessories, along with a new book or two, and something to add to the coloring book shelf and marker bin.

The kids love it because swim suits mean that summer is coming, and who doesn't love a matching swim ensemble (coordinating flip flops are a must, plus sunglasses, a hat, and this year, a fun/snorkel/mask set that was a HUGE hit), and I love it because I have to buy them swim suits each year anyway and now I get to throw it in the "holiday items" financial bucket and indulge a little in something cuter than I might normally feel budget-bound to spend.

Cora was DELIGHTED by the Easter festivities. We hide the kids' baskets (my parents hid ours through college), and Cora was SO excited to find hers and the bath toys hiding inside. She pulled out her new book next and immediately parked herself in Landon's lap so he could read it. She has those big sibs well trained.

We got dressed for church, throwing on cardigans I'd packed away when I thought winter was over because it was randomly 50 degrees and rainy outside, but I thought everyone still looked quite festive.

Cora was obsessed with her new duck bath toy and featured it prominently in all of her Easter pictures from that point forward.

Cora also has a new "cheese" face that she flashes at you when she sees a camera. It involves closing her eyes and half-smiling and is not super effective.

After church we commenced the egg hunt, indoors this year because of the rainy and cold situation outside. Cora, who was basically an expert egg huntress at this point, took charge immediately by appropriating her sister's bucket and marching into the wild.

She then spent a lot of time trying to hold three eggs at once, not trusting her bucket to hold anything this important. She found this approach frustrating, but persisted nonetheless.

Cheese face!

The eggs were all found just as brunch was done baking (this casserole and this spinach quiche, plus fruit, biscuits and more carrot cake. And mimosas, obvs) and it was all delicious.

My parents left about 1, Cora was asleep at 1:02, JP was asleep at 1:04, and the big kids were relegated to any room that wasn't the TV room where I was watching HGTV in a semi-comatose state, and all was calm until we realized at 5 p.m. that our only food was leftover egg casserole and carrot cake and we needed to go to the store. We fed the kids mac and cheese since the day was already a nutritional loss, and then ate takeout Thai on the couch at 9 while watching Mad Men, which, other than the fact that I'm already sad this is the beginning of the end of Mad Men, was really a perfect cap on a really great weekend.

Today was back to the grind, though the kids did play "egg hunt" this evening after swim practice while I secretly shaved tiny bites off the side of the leftover carrot cake until I realized all my tiny bites had added up to another 25% of the cake and holy crap I MUST stop.

this used to be half the cake; you can't even tell right?

JP got back from his board meeting and the first thing he said was, "Huh, I thought we had more leftover." "Huh, weird," I agreed, so glad and a little jealous when he polished off the remaining piece.