We had a wonderful weekend celebrating Easter and spending time with both family and friends. I've decided that although having a kid makes holidays a lot less relaxing, it also makes them so much more fun. And although Jackson doesn't quite grasp the real meaning of Christ's resurrection, seeing Easter through his eyes {mainly his excitement over all of the egg hunting and candy eating} filled me with such joy.
On Friday, we went to Stroller Strides at Zilker Park, and all of the other parks joined us so that we could have a huge egg hunt afterwards. So many moms...
...and even more babies.
The kids were so ready to get out of the strollers to hunt eggs. Of course, the moms wanted to snap a couple of pictures first, but you can imagine how that went considering this is the best one I got.
As soon as the hunt started, it was obvious that Jackson knew what he was doing this time. Apparently the church egg hunt was just for practice because he definitely brought his A-game to this one.
At the post-hunt party, he ate as much candy from his basket as he could before I got smart and hid the rest and quite possibly one {or ten} too many of the beautiful little flowers that someone had made of pretzels, Hershey kisses, and M&M's, and then we headed home where I made him a lunch that he didn't eat. The good news is that when I stripped him of his chocolate-stained clothes, we found the sticker that he got from the police officer that was there. Because everybody knows that your belly is the best place to keep your junior police officer badge -- especially when you have abs that looks this good.
Post-nap jam session next door at Charlie's house for their favorite girl Megan.
On Saturday, we spent the day at Kyle and Steve's house. A cold front had come through over night, so it was too cold to swim, but they surprised Jackson with a new fishing pole, and he quickly became obsessed with his newfound hobby of "fishin' ".
Even in the hot tub, he didn't want to do anything but fish.
During Jackson's nap, Ben and I snuck away to have lunch at Greenhouse Craft Food and then treated ourselves to pedicures {and a manicure for me}.
And before we headed home that evening, Jackson and Kyle decided to do a little painting of their own. It started out as driveway paint but quickly turned into this...
...and then this.
He wasn't the only one though. Apparently crazy is genetic.
A bike ride in the nude while covered in body paint -- this kid is definitely an Austinite.
When it came time for us to go, he wasn't quite ready {he never is}, so we talked him into it by promising a stop at the pond at the front of their neighborhood to see and feed the "duckies".
Unfortunately they weren't there though, so we made another quick stop by the {new and improved} duck pond and park that Ben went to when he was little.
This morning, Jackson must have known that he had a fun day ahead of him because he was up early. We wanted to make sure he ate breakfast before he even saw his Easter basket, and right after that, he decided that he wanted to take a shower, too. While waiting for Ben to join him, he did his best to keep himself entertained.
I should have known something was up when he crouched down into this position though because it was not long after I snapped this picture that he left us a couple of his own tiny chocolate eggs on the shower floor.
Thankfully that wasn't the only chocolate this morning though. The Easter bunny brought all sorts of goodies -- bubbles, stickers, M&M's, glow sticks, Peeps, a bug bungalow, and a chocolate bunny.
Jackson emptied the basket as quickly as he could while hollering out the name of each treasure and then quickly got started on the candy.
He was bound and determined the eat the bunny's candy eyes first.
Later this morning, we headed to church for the family butterfly release {or as Uncle Nelson called it "the butterfly massacre"}. We didn't really realize that it was raining/misting until we got outside but decided to go anyway, and as soon as our butterfly "flew" off, we headed to church.
The sanctuary was decorated so beautifully with all of the butterflies on which our congregation had written our prayer concerns during Lent. Mine was a prayer of thanksgiving of new life and for the sweet baby boy growing inside of my tummy and his wonderful big brother.
We were so thankful to have Nelson, Holly, and my mom join us for the service...
...and instead of taking Jackson to the nursery, we decided to take him with us to the service, too. Thankfully he did pretty good -- although even a good kid is quite the distraction, so I don't think we'll be making this a regular thing anytime soon.
During the children's moment, I took Jackson up to the front, and then we danced around the entire sanctuary while shaking our streamers to the hymn "Lord of the Dance".
I think my favorite part of the service though was when we would stand up to sing a hymn. About halfway through the service, I realized that Jackson had started "singing", too, and when I stopped to listen to what he was saying, I realized that he was singing "Happy Birthday", which is his very favorite song of all -- "happy to you, happy to you...".
After Jackson's nap, we headed over to my mom's house for Easter dinner and an egg hunt. My mom's cousin Travis and his family were there, too, and Jackson was so excited to see Jack, Sophie, and Olivia. Getting a picture of them together was quite the task because if there's anything this group has in common, it's energy.
This egg hunt was a little more difficult than the others, but thankfully Jackson found a few eggs with just a little help.
Inspecting his loot, and eating just about every Tootsie Roll in his basket at the same time.
These two are so cute together -- Olivia loves doting on Jackson, and of course, he eats that right up.
Tonight at bath time, Jackson decided that he wanted to get in the "hot tub" like he did at Pops and Meemaw's house. After yesterday's body paint episode, we had filled a 5-gallon bucket with warm hot tub water for him to rinse off in, so apparently he now refers to a bucket as a "hot tub".
Because it definitely doesn't get any classier than that.
Happy Easter from our family to yours!
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