We went to church in person for the first time since COVID as a family and it felt wonderful.  The atmosphere was alive and it really felt joyous to be amongst so many others celebrating.  While I know COVID is still going around, I no longer have any anxiety over us getting it.

Despite a chill in the air, it was a sunny beautiful day.  The Easter Bunny arrived in the morning.  The girls are barely able to sit across one stair anymore!

We captured a family pic on the way out.

A walk to Whole Foods through the Town Green led us to a Town Green Easter Egg Hunt that the girls participated in for a few minutes.

My parents, sister, and the boys arrived around lunchtime, and we had our first Easter Egg Hunt.  We modified the color scheme that we normally do as we didn’t think a 3.5-year-old would grasp the concept of only picking up select colors.  Anyone could pick any eggs they found up to a certain number in which they had to wait for everyone to get that number before running off for the next round. Avery re-injured her foot during one of the last races.

First the obligatory Easter Basket picture with the girls.

The boys joined them. 

Added a few more to the mix. 

And then they were off!

My mom was just as into it!  I think deep down she wanted to join in the hunt!

Chocolate and candy were sampled.

A little playtime and bike riding and a lot of afternoon cooking.  Emerson wanted to make beef bourgeoise, which is no simple task.  Her and I spent most the afternoon in the kitchen.  The downstairs was bright and airy, and we watched everyone outside while we prepped and cooked. 

A second smaller hunt occurred in the evening.  This time jellybeans were the surprise.

My parents came back in the evening, and we enjoyed a wonderful dinner cooked by Emerson and myself.

It was so great to be celebrating another weekend with my family.

Happy Easter!

The 2^nd Annual Baking Challenge occurred this past weekend.  Whether we were going to make it was TBD for a few weeks as the date was the Sunday after Katy’s wedding and we had originally been planning on spending the night in Leesburg after the wedding.

This competition proved to be fierce last year and the girls were all in for this year.  As such, I cancelled the Saturday evening hotel reservations, went ingredient shopping Friday, and the girls started baking Saturday.

Emerson – Emerson chose to make a lemon bundt cake with lemon icing.  Her first one was delicious but the top stuck to the pan!  SO, she had to make it a second time.  The good news is that we were able to taste the first one and make a few slight modifications (slightly more lemon zest) and it took her considerably less time to make the second cake since she knew what she was doing.  She made a delicious icing Sunday, and her cake earned her 3^rd place!

Avery – Avery originally wanted to make a zebra cake as did Harper.  Avery does not generally help me out much in the kitchen or even know where a lot of the stuff is located in the kitchen so I felt like she shouldn’t make something so complex.  With the wedding, I didn’t know how I was going to help their girls make three separate things in the time we had.  So Avery ended up going to my parents’ house and making my sister’s famous chocolate chip cookies.  They made the dough and she shaped and baked the cookies Sunday just before we went to the event.  They were delicious as always.  The cookies were a hit!  When Jack went for his second cookie, he said “these cookies are out of this world”.  Rumor has it that the judges were also disappointed that they only received one cookie to share!  The crowd devoured the cookies…there wasn’t a single one left.  To my surprise, Avery did not win a prize.  Perhaps because it was just a cookie…but it was not just a cookie…it was the world’s best chocolate chip cookie!  If there was an award for crowd favorite, she would have secured that in a second!

Harper – Harper made a zebra cake. The recipe was somewhat complex and the amount of batter that the recipe should have yielded came up short and I’m still not sure why.  With my guidance we split the two batters but the chocolate was so much thinner than the white batter.  To thicken it up we added flour, which changed the consistency.  There was leftover chocolate batter so Sunday morning I made a small cake with it so we could taste the cake.  Harper said it was good, but truth was it was pretty bad!  I was almost about to tell her we were going to make a new cake to go along with the delicious cream cheese buttercream frosting and raspberry filling she had made.  But I quickly realized it was her cake, not mine, and she was happy with it.  I helped her ice the cake…I probably did more than I should have with actually icing it…the perfectionist in me really wanted to test out my skills on the turntable!  Turns out the competition cake was better than the one I made that morning with the leftover batter. Harper earned herself 2^nd place!

We had a sugar high all day.  I froze the remaining cake for a special treat another day.    All the participants did great. The girls had a great time and I’m sure are already looking forward to next year.

My cousin Katy is married!  She married Conner, who she has been dating for at least 8 years, this past weekend. My sister, Gabriel, Noah, and Elias came into town.  Our whole family took up an entire table!  Noah couldn’t get enough of the dance floor.  We were the old people at the wedding. Oh how times have changed from when we were in our 20’s at a wedding! Bringing our kids to the wedding was neat though…a different kind of enjoyment. 

We escaped a long weekend in Rehobeth the first weekend of Spring Break. Our neighborhood friends Bob and Cindy offered for us to stay in their beach house and we took them up on their offer.  The weather was chilly; however, we welcomed it because the original forecast was calling for rain all weekend long. 

Their house was a five-ten minute walk from the main strip and a 12 minute walk to the beach.  Our kids have never been to a boardwalk or a busy beach before and we had a great time walking around and exploring.  We drank a few beers, ate yummy ice-cream twice from Kilwin’s twice, and ate a combination of good food (Dogfish Head and Egg), not so good food (Nicola pizza) and in between (Salt Air).

We window shopped along the boardwalk, we shopped at the Outlets, we got caught up in the hype of the arcade, and we almost didn’t return to avoid having to drive over The Chesapeake Bay Bridge again. 

I think April Fools Day may be Harper’s most favorite day of the year other than her birthday and Christmas. She woke up cheerful and ready to start pranking. Food coloring was the major accessory in pranking Justin and me.  First Justin in the morning; she filled his water bottle with green food coloring.  She added yellow food coloring and mayo to Emerson’s scrambled eggs.  And she made me a grilled cheese with bright yellow cream cheese. We were onto her pretty quickly with the food pranks. 

Her best prank she kept as an idea and it was the best one yet.