Happy Easter! Still a pandemic...

Well, it's been over a year of living during a global pandemic, and the holidays keep ticking past. It's super strange to not see our extended families, but we have managed to have a good time by ourselves...and developed some new traditions along the way. 

Several people sent little treats and cards for the kids. I made a dutch baby pancake with Cracker Barrel apples and whipped cream, which always gets the kids out of bed. 

I made a hilariously difficult egg scavenger hunt for the kids with "Easter Surprises" at the end. It took them over an hour to get through it! I hid clues in eggs directing them to the next hiding spot, and they had to move all around the house, and then use the letters written on all the eggs to figure out a secret phrase, which was a hint to the final hiding spot. M bought each kid a new headlamp and an exercise tracker watch. They loved the watches and checked up on their progress of steps the whole day. Marko was aggressively logging steps and ended up with over 17,000! We'll see if that keeps up. I couldn't find peanut free chocolate this year, so we mostly skipped candy, except for Peeps.  My neighbor's brother baked us a beautiful box of cookies and pastries, so nobody felt deprived for not having a candy filled Easter basket. We dyed eggs last week and read all the gospel stories about the trial and death of Jesus. Today we did the traditional egg cracking contest (my egg prevailed!) and watched the Pope's mass on TV.  We played soccer with our neighbors and chatted on the phone with some of our family. We ate leftover jambalaya and cold pizza. Overall, it was a pretty low-stress but also celebratory day. The sunshine definitely helped.