Easter Hunt 2012 (Jensen’s 3rd Easter, 2nd Hunt and 1st Easter for Lyoto)!

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My amazing friend Melissa sent the boys (oh, how I love to say that) these cuter-than-life Easter baskets which the Easter Bunny used to stash their gifts on Easter Sunday, but we never used them in the wet weather. No, no.  Not our pretty baskets.  Here they are though, pretending they are getting called into action.

Even E.B was braving the elements.  But only for a while, and only for photo opportunities.  No bunny likes a wet bottom 😉

So, after the necessary distraction of the egg-hunter (thank you Abuelito for showing Jensen Indiana the horses in the other field), the hunt was on!

Off We Go!

At first Jensen was showing every egg that he found to me.  I’m not sure if he remembered last year or not but he seemed to know what he was doing very fast and was zipping around in all directions.

There were big, foil covered Peppa Pig and Monsters Inc eggs, tiny Cadbury eggs of various flavours, carrots with packets of Haribo jelly sweets (Easter mix, no less) and ducks with big gummy sweets in them….and one surprise Peppa Pig egg with jellybeans and a trinket in it, all scattered in various locations by that crafty Easter Bunny.

Our baskets this year were, for Jensen, the Build a Bear workshop basket that he got last year, and for Dadda the pretty woven basket that I received as part of my “secret Easter Bunny” gift from my friend Stephanie in the USA.  I love wicker baskets.  Particularly coloured ones. Probably because we have nothing in the UK like that for sale, because, well, England sucks at putting any effort into celebrating.  It wouldn’t hurt stores to release some Easter goods or Easter eggs that aren’t just wrapped in gold foil at Easter.  Even Smarties let me down this year and deviated from their normal brown with Smarties on it foil and switched to boring gold foil.  Seriously, England retailers.  You make me miserable.

Anyway, back to the hunting.  Jensen was having the best time.  The idea was for Dadda to hunt the little eggs and Jensen hunt the bigger ones, but our eagle-eyed adventurer was finding them all ~ and so Dadda followed like some personal assistant, stooping with the baskets when needed and steering in the right direction when necessary.

Then disaster struck. Jensen stepped on one of the eggs by accident.  He stood, watching it mournfully, squished into the grass.

So we decided to make light of it to turn his little sad frown upside down, and got him to stomp on it, really hard.  Toddlers and stomping like dinosaurs go together like marmalade and toast.  Perfect.

Wham!  Of course then Jensen wasn’t sure what he was going to do with the chocolatey crumbs until he spied his good friend, the watering can duck.

So, he gathered the chocolate splinters in the shredded, crumpled, Easter coloured foil and toted them across the garden, to lay at the feet of his iron-feathered friend.  He shook them out carefully onto the brickwork and looked hopefully at me.  It’s times like this when my heart goes all squishy.  He’s such a sweet, sweet boy with an powerful imagination; one that I hope he never loses touch with.

The hunt continued ~ no location was too low for our Easter explorer (or too muddy).  He joyfully swooped around the garden, plucking carrots from under rain-soaked hedges and depositing them into his assistant’s baskets.

 

He even began experimenting, Tom-Cruise-in-Cocktail-like with egg depositing…

…and out of nowhere came a swagger even!

When all of the eggs had been collected, Jensen, wanting to prolong the fun of finding the eggs, decided to hide a few for Dadda to find.  Sadly for Dadda, this meant Jensen hiding them and standing guard, ready to take down any egg-predator that came his way.

 

Then Dadda decided to run off with the Easter Bunny and more crazy chasing ensued across the soggy lawn.

Exhausted (Dadda, that is, not Jensen ~ NEVER Jensen, who has an energy that rivals the Duracell Bunny) we decided it was time to count the eggs and see what treasures they contained.

 

Jensen lifted his baskets like a champion and looked everywhere but at my camera.

Worry not, health conscious people out there; Jensen won’t be eating all of the contents of these baskets.  In fact, he’ll prefer a banana.  But it’s fun to hunt.

Then it was time for the one-man Easter bonnet parade.  Granny bought him a kit that Daddy put together.  A manly blue bunny hat.  He rocked it.

We headed indoors to count the candy.  Jensen was most interested in emptying everything out.

So, late or not, this hunt was a success in our little adventurer’s eyes.  Despite the Easter Bunny failing to deliver (thank you, eBay seller) his Raa Raa and Cubby Buggy as promised, he seemed to forgive the furry fellow and enjoyed just having the little candy things to open.  I, on the other hand, feel so bad for letting him down.

It’s now nearly the Queen’s birthday and he’s eaten 3 tiny jelly sweets and no chocolate eggs.  It really is the hunt with our little one.  I hope it follows that when he grows it will always be more about the journey for him than the destination, too.

Next year we’re working on something extra amazing with a very special friend of mine…but for now, no-bunny’s gonna let that secret out of the Easter basket.

And now it’s late, and I’m off for a cup of Tetley and a snuggle with my baby bunny….