Celebrating spring

A few years ago when I mentioned to Adam that I would like to incorporate the idea of the root children into our Easter celebration I am pretty sure he rolled his eyes. But being the amazing guy that he is, he jumped on board immediately. After all we had become quite the gardening family and our kids were full blown into taking magical walks in the redwoods. They loved the playful idea of fairies and gnomes, and had developed a very strong connection to the natural world early on. They took to it right away. The idea of root children waking up from a long winters sleep and coming up from the ground to celebrate the coming of spring.
So last night as the kids were falling asleep Charlie asked for one more story. I thought Adam would continue the trend of some amazing super hero story that Charlie requested night after night. But instead Adam told an elaborate story of the collaboration between the root children and the Easter bunny. And yet again I was reminded how lucky I am to love and co-parent with Adam.

This Easter was pretty low key. We went to a city-wide Easter egg hunt. Our first and most likely last. Although it was festive and cute, I didn't think about the amount of crappy candy that would end up in my kids' nature baskets.

Sunday morning the kids woke up very excited to see what the root children brought. They were thrilled with a few small toys and a few pieces of yummy candy from new leaf.

It was pretty cool to watch them play so creatively with both the castle and doll house and their new figures.

I am very happy to say that Charlie is slowly but surely moving away from super heroes and into the whole world of dragons, knights, and kings.

After hours of playing nicely together (finally!), we remembered we had to dye some eggs. I had been wanting to try to do it naturally using veggies and spices, and sure enough I had cabbage to make blue eggs and tumeric and cumin to make yellow eggs. It was fun, funky, easy, cheaper, and more natural than using crazy dyes. I am sold, and look forward to future years when I can get really creative!

Later on we headed to my parents for a nice diner with the Wilsons. It was fun coming over for dinner, it felt different than when we were living there. The kids were perfect all evening. We ended our gathering with an Easter egg hunt out front...since there were 4 dogs racing around the backyard. Feeling overwhelmed with the amount of horrible candy my kids ate on Saturday I hid our hard boiled eggs, a few "good" lollipops, and some plastic eggs filled with delicous (yet pricey) acacia and blueberry gummy bears.

I really didn't capture the excitement that well. But Kate was so cute. Everything she found she would say something like: "That swilly, who put that there" and once she got back inside she devoured her lollipops only taking a break to eat one hard boiled egg.

I look back on the spring 3 years ago when Kate was born. I remember vividly what it was like to have baby Kate in my ergo and play with Charlie in the sun. I remember gardening, walks, trips to the park, zoo, beach. I envision the same thing this spring. Soon I will have my final baby in my arms, my body somewhat back to myself, and lots of nature to explore with my wonderful kids.

Happy Spring.