For me, one of the best parts of being a parent is getting to make holidays special for your children. I usually don’t put much effort into the smaller holidays like Valentines or St.Patrick’s Day, but when it comes to the big stuff like Halloween, Christmas and Easter I like to try and go all out.
Growing up, Easter was always a pretty significant holiday and I have fond memories of yearly Easter egg hunts with my siblings. We would wake up to a basket filled with some small treats and usually a new outfit, then there would be small foil eggs and chocolate bunnies hidden throughout the house. The smaller eggs would be free for the taking, but we knew when it came to the bigger stuff there would be one for each of us. Sometimes my mom would even write our names right on the items in Sharpie marker. It was pretty chaotic with three siblings and I know my dad found great pleasure in finding the perfect hiding spot and then sitting back to watch as we tore the house apart in search of that last chocolate bunny.
Egg hunting with my sisters. That’s me on the right.
My mom never bought the plastic Easter eggs and now that I have, I think I understand why. They really don’t hold that much and it seems like you have to work backwards to try and find items to fit the eggs. There are a lot of great suggestions for fillers online, but I am mainly sticking to candy in ours to avoid more of the random trinkets that seem to accumulate in all corners of my house. I do still love the idea and uniformity of the plastic eggs for the hunt, though, so I was happy to find some large sized plastic eggs at Dollar Tree that I will be able to fill with a couple smaller toys each I know the kids will love.
The eggs are pretty obvious, but I have been struggling with how to help the kids know what else they are searching for on their Easter hunt. My first thought was to maybe attach a picture of a bunny to the items in their hiding spots, but I wasn’t loving this idea. I then thought back to our Disneyland Treasure Hunt and how much fun my son loved having the printed map to guide him, so I decided I would create a graphic based list to use for their Easter hunts.
Each kid will get the list, in a card, with their basket Easter morning. The visual reference will help let them know exactly what they are looking for and which color eggs are theirs. I am also hoping it will help my preschooler a bit with number recognition and counting as he makes his way through his list.
I am most excited for the wrapped gifts on their lists. For my Lego obsessed little boy, I was happy to find this cute bunny set when we were in Legoland, California. I swear they weren’t even in the gift shop the first day when we looked and then I just happened to take one last quick peek through the gift shop before we left the park on the second day and found it. I couldn’t resist picking one up to tuck away for Easter.
And because I am all about keeping things as fair and even as possible between my kids, I was excited to come across this pink bunny filled Duplo set at Toys R Us for little sister.
Their second wrapped item will be an Easter themed book I have picked out for each of them.
They are also being spoiled with Lindt chocolate this year thanks to a half price voucher I was able to get through wagjag.com. Hopefully they will be willing to share with mom and dad.
And it isn’t Easter without a Kinder Surprise! I opted for the slightly bigger ones and am excited to see what kind of surprise they have inside.
Finally, I can’t forget to mention the matching pajamas going in their Easter baskets! It is hard to resist matching pyjamas and it has become a bit of a yearly tradition now for me.
I snapped up two pairs when we were at the Gymboree outlet in Palm Desert. They will be going in the Easter buckets alongside fun new cups, a few chocolates and my daughters favorite – Jelly Belly’s.
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