Chasing Babies... Growing in Grace: First Day of Spring Celebrations

Thursday, June 14, 2012

First Day of Spring Celebrations

Almost summer??? Then I suppose I should post about our "First day of spring" celebration!

With a new baby born just days before the first day of spring, I still had high hopes for a special day. We picked up library books to start up my latest homeschooling plan. Our first unit would be spring... original, no?

Since I brought our little Belle home on the actual first day of spring, I decided to bump our "celebration" to Friday. Daddy would be off work still and grandparents were still here. Perfect!

My kids had their first ever egg hunt. We don't do anything "egg" related for Easter, but both My Beloved and I grew up with "Easter Egg Hunts" every year. And baskets. And bunnies.

So when we determined early on that we wanted Easter to be all about Jesus, I knew that, one day, I would have to institute a special "first day of spring egg hunt".

We started pretty simple. I picked up a couple bags of plastic eggs in advance and filled them the night before. Each kid got a paper "lunch" bag that I folded down to make a nice sized "basket" for collecting their eggs. Just before the hunt began, I grabbed my bag of eggs and went out back to hide them. I knew just how many we had (33 I think) so each kid was allowed 11 eggs (though I think I increased the older ones and decreased Little Man's for time sake). I put some up high, some down low, some in easy places, some in hard (I thought).

After everyone was done, we headed back for the front door where they found this shared "Spring Basket" waiting on the front steps for them.

I simply used a basket we already use somewhere else and added the fabric and some blue "grass" someone gave us last year because they weren't going to use it. We were going to make cookies, but when friends brought us a bunch of cute "spring" cookies they had decorated, I just put a few of those in there (we're talking simplifying with a newborn here people!)

I had also asked my mom to find and send us some "Simply Fruit" fruit roll ups because I haven't found them in our stores. That was a fun treat for the kids (and me!) And the punch balls were from some other little gift a while back that we'd never used and forgotten about, so I put those in there. (Sadly, I'm not sure we've done them yet.)

The kids thought it was all great!

Inside the eggs??? Not chocolate bunnies and jelly beans.

Nope... "Bunny" crackers (health food version of fishy crackers), almonds,

raisins, and cute little gummy "moose heads".

(I was fussing about wanting the gummy bunnies, but they were more expensive. I was reminded by My Beloved that baby moose are born in the spring too. I guess I was still stuck on the "Easter" part of the whole thing. Glad to be reminded!)