Birthdays and Easter and Exams, Oh My!

4-23-11 Easter Eve

I worked most of the day, on a paper.  But I came home around dinner time to do some Easter festivities.  We dyed a dozen hard boiled eggs.  It was the perfect amount.  Growing up in a family of five, as I did, I think we must have dyed 3 or 4 dozen.  But 12 eggs was about Jack’s limit of patience.  It was a little dicey for us, too – want to have a heart attack?  Plant your clumsy bumbly preschooler in front of a bunch of full cups of dye.  I got no pictures of the dyeing process, my hands were otherwise occupied with staving off disaster.

4-24-11 Easter Sunday

I woke up at 6:30 or so, and, er, discovered to my amazement that the Easter bunny had hidden plastic eggs all over the front porch!  What a bunny!

He’d also hid our edible colored eggs around the house.  “He” hid them so well, it took us quite a while to find the last one (tucked on top of a silver platter I have hung on the dining room wall.)

E.B. had also stuffed some Easter baskets full of mostly trinkets, and a little bit of candy, and displayed them very nicely on the dining table, and didn’t hide them, even though they were always hid at my house when we grew up, which I think is pretty awesome, but whatever, you know.  It’s cool.

The Easter Bunny also left two little buckets with blue bunnies in them on our porch.  This was a for real surprise to us, actually – I think it was our lovely Australian neighbors, who always remember the boys at Christmas, too.

Our two monkeys finally woke up, and we showed them their excellent baskets.  Neither one had any trouble diving right in.

We then hunted for eggs, inside and out.  Jack had a great time, and tried to give some to Liam, who remained oblivious to the eggs but was still really digging that green polygon.

We finally found them all.

Then it was time to enjoy the spoils.

Having thus sugar’d and spoiled the kids good and proper, I put them down for naps and then worked on my paper and exam studying for the rest of the day.  We normally would have gone to church, but I had a fever, so we had to skip it.  It was just as well.  I had a lot to do for school.  I made shrimp and grits and potatoes for dinner, which was great.  We used up the last of our stone ground grits.  Lord knows, years ago if you’d told me I was going to be a grits fan, I’da laughed in your face, but here we are.  My husband’s Southernness is like The Borg.

The next day, we good and ruined any hope we have of convincing Jack that life, normal old going-to-the-park-watching-Backyardigans-not-eating-sweets-all-the-time-life, is an acceptable daily standard.

Monday, April 25th, 2011, was my brother’s twenty fourth birthday and my son’s third.  Randy got a phone call, but Jack got a trip to the zoo.  Jack wins.

We had a lot of fun that morning.  At the fais-do-do hut in the Louisiana swamp area of the zoo, Jack snacked on Teddy Grahams (which he calls care bears) while the Professor and I had our first post-Lent sodas – and I have to say, I was underwhelmed.  But then again, it wasn’t Dr. Pepper.  Anyway, we caught the giraffes, elephants, sea lions, regular old land lions, tigers, bears, alligators (white and green), monkeys, leopards, birds, snakes, and all the rest.  When we came home, our nanny arrived for the afternoon, with two huge balloons and a wrapped dino puzzle in tow.  Jack flipped his lid over those balloons.  That child has always loved balloons.  Anyway, she didn’t even really need to come, because we had done a thorough job of wearing out those two little boys, again, and they had pretty solid and awesome naps, again, while I went back to work finishing up my paper, which was due at 5pm, and which I turned in at 4:53.

That evening, we went out to dinner, where The Professor and I had a giant, GIANT plate of fried seafood, and Jack ate an entire grilled cheese with fries, and someone apparently made off with our American Express, which is now MIA.  Then we came home and had cake, and then Jack opened his presents, some from us, some mailed in from family.

Gifts included a way cool Thomas train set thing (with a lighthouse, bridge, and boat), a set of sand toys (including a big yellow shovel which he carries everywhere.  This shovel is HUGE.  And yet we must take it to the grocery store . . . ), a tunnel to go with his pop up tent, a tool box, Play Doh and cool Play Doh accoutrements, a dinosaur floor puzzle, a huge bubbles bucket with three wands, lots of books, and other fun stuff that I can’t remember off the top of my head but all of which he loved.

Two papers and two exams later, on Thursday afternoon, we threw a party for Jack.  It wasn’t a kid party – we invited a dozen friends of ours for a grill-out.  We said no gifts, but he still got a couple – Thomas stuff, a guaranteed hit.  All the little kids went outside and blew bubbles and drew with sidewalk chalk, and we all ate various delicious brats, and drank beer, and I was too busy having fun to take a single picture of it.  We sang happy birthday, one last time, and everyone ate red velvet cupcakes and then headed home.  The next day, I turned in my last paper at 3pm.

One exam left, Wednesday.  And then, I’m officially a 3L.  A lot of people commented on how awful it must be to have my kid’s birthday and Easter and all of this stuff happen during the busiest week of a law student’s life.  I have to say, it was kind of perfect.  Enforced studying and merriment.  Perspective.  Joy amid the ruin.  That sort of thing.  I wouldn’t have traded a minute of this fun week for the world.

Now, to convince Jack that cake every day actually *isn’t* how life is supposed to be.