Celebrate Round 2

On Friday, I shared with you all the fun we've been having celebrating both mine and Colton's birthdays.  But obviously we couldn't stop there!  With Passover and Easter falling around the same time, we had to whip out the matzoh, eggs, and baskets and get our party on for those days as well!  So here's the recap (and warning this is a major photo dump!).
For those of you unfamiliar with Passover, the "celebration" kicks off with a Seder: a long meal that begins with a service detailing the story of Passover.  Colton attends a Jewish preschool.  Before his Spring Break began, he had brought home a bag of Seder crafts he couldn't wait to share with everyone: a wine cup (because you're supposed to drink 4 glasses of wine (obviously grape juice for him) over the course of the meal), a matzah bag to store the matzah, an affikoman bag (to use to hide a piece of matzah and then the kids look for it...whoever finds it, gets a prize ($20 in Colton's case...I'm getting in on that next year!)), and even a vase and some flowers for the table.  Colton was very proud to play big boy and took his seat next to his Uncle Ry.  Like most events, Levi was just excited to have food to munch on!  The other highlight was that my niece was there, ready for her very first Seder...so much fun to have cousins to play with at these things!

That was about it for our Passover festivities.  Unfortunately, Jewish holidays just aren't as big on fun as Christian ones.  There's no egg hunts, candy filled eggs, or anything fun...just no eating bread for a week.  Great, huh?!?  The boys did have their matzah, though, over the week (with peanut butter and jelly) and even some matzo brei for breakfast (a scrambled egg/matzo combo).

So with Passover in full swing, we also got in on the Easter fun!  First, we got out the dyes and tried our hands at some egg dyeing.  Levi was so excited to get to participate this year!

On Saturday, we took advantage of some nice weather here in Va. Beach (finally!) to hit up an Eggstravaganza complete with petting zoo, pony rides, inflatables, and an egg hunt (of course!).

We hadn't really built up the Easter bunny much around our house, so when the boys woke up Easter morning they really weren't expecting anything.  We gave them their baskets and they definitely got into the spirit!

After they had finished, we told them we thought we had heard the Easter bunny out front over night.  Needless to say, they were pretty stoked to look out there and see some eggs left just for them (the egg hunt the day before had about a bajillion kids in attendance...the eggs were literally gone in 10 seconds!).

And to bring our celebrating to a close, the boys whipped up some chocolate-peanut butter eggs to deliver to some family members and then had a lovely Easter dinner with Josh's family members at Outback!

We all know I love a good celebration, but I must admit even I'm ready to return to a little bit of normalcy and routine around here after having so many special days/nights lately! I'm sure I'll get over it quickly!  

Hope you all had a good Passover, Easter, or whatever else you may be celebrating:)