Easter Part II

I'm sure I took lots of pictures at our annual Easter Family Reunion with my mom's family but I can't find any of them at the moment and since it's the end of April, I think it's probably time to give up. (Here are pictures from last year.) And here are some Easter egg related pictures from this year.  This year's eggs were dyed with a traditional food coloring & vinegar mix. Maybe next year we will have a chance to give natural dyes another go.

Easter: Part II

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Easter Day at Cousins Jeff and Tiffany's house was the annual big family reunion with egg hunt, egg and water balloon toss, sack race, swinging, volleyball, bbq-ing and trampolining. Lots of fun, and so great to see everyone.

Easter: Part I

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Our first Easter celebration was a sunny day at Beste and Papa Willie's house. The girls had a fantastic time spending the day together and hunting for eggs.

Easter 2010

Saturday we had a lovely Easter brunch at Thomas' mom's house, where Sylvie got some more practice on her egg hunting. She's definitely got the hang of this.Can you tell how much Sylvie LOVES being a big cousin?
Sunday was my mom's side's big Easter family potluck. Sylvie loved all of the activities this year. The sack race...
The egg toss (it was a favorite, and she managed to avoid being slimed!)...
And more egg hunting!

Check out Easter brunch at Beste's 2009 and Easter family picnic 2009.

Dying Eggs (A Science Experiment)

During a bike ride on our local elementary school campus, Sylvie asked me what the words on the door "Science Lab" said and then asked me what science was. I gave my best almost-3-year-old explanation, something like "you have a question or an idea so you do a project to see if your idea is right." To which Sylvie said, "YES. I want to do THAT."

Dying eggs seemed like a seasonal and festive science experiment, so we decided to go with that. Based on this BHG article, I figured any natural extract plus vinegar would dye eggs. Sylvie and I gathered tomato juice, chai tea, spinach, carrots and orange peels. I boiled each to produce colored water and then we added vinegar. Carrots produced a shade just between orange peel and spinach and we were running out of jars, so carrot water didn't make the cut.

Tomato looked promising, but didn't stick at all. Orange peel also produced pretty much egg-colored eggs. But the tea and spinach eggs were, as Sylvie says, "kinda pretty."
Sylvie currently loves taking pictures, which results in quite a lot of pictures of her fingertips. But she got a pretty cool close-up of the eggs:
If we were to experiment with egg dyes again I would try some things with more pigment like red cabbage, blueberries, cranberries or grape juice. Or Kool-Aid. I love that lime green.

Ready for Easter

Sylvie celebrated Easter a little early on Saturday morning with all of her school friends. We wanted to bring some special Easter treats, but 2 of her friends have egg allergies so eggs had to be avoided. We decided on homemade Peeps, using Alton Brown's marshmallow recipe. Who knew making marshmallows is so easy?! The hardest part is 15 solid minutes of mixing, so a good standing mixer is a must.

I cut them out with oiled cookie cutters and Sylvie gave them a dusting of pink sugar to make them as Peep-ish as possible.
I found cute bag toppers for our Peeps and Sylvie and I assembled. Sylvie LOVES getting to use a stapler.
Ready to go!
Saturday was a gorgeous morning and Sylvie had a great time hunting for eggs and playing in the sunshine with her friends!

Easter: Part Two

What a difference a year makes! Our family has an annual family reunion and picnic every year for Easter and last year Sylvie was an almost one year-old with a basket on her head. This Easter she was a walking, talking and yes, jelly bean eating, toddler. So much fun!

The kids line up for the bunny hop sack race...
Sylvie needed a little help with the hopping, but boy was it fun!

Cousin Amanda is becoming an expert egg hunter...

Aunt Kim and Cousin Amanda...

Sylvie puts in some swing time...

Check out more pictures from Easter over on Amanda's blog, and pictures from our Easter celebration two weeks ago with Beste are here.

Easter: Part One

Sylvie's Bestemor will be in Norway over Easter, but she certainly wasn't going to go without celebrating with her two best girls. So today was Easter at Beste's house, and first up was egg dying. Sylvie got an Easter Bunny Potato Head from Aunt Kim and Uncle Nils, and we all know how Sylvie feels about a Potato Head.

Here is Amanda finding an egg, or maybe a leaf. She found both pretty thrilling.

Sylvie goes on the hunt for eggs...

They even had treats inside!

More photos of Easter at Beste's over on Amanda's blog.