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Wednesday
Apr152009

Easter is eggciting

I had to do it - it's the obligatory cliche.  The pictures from our Easter weekend are now up in the April 2009 album.  It truly was a wonderful weekend.  Friday was our Easter bunny day, and after visiting Creep E. Bunny (he's the one in yellow) at the local resale shop Calvin begged to go visit the bunny at the mall as well.  Of course it didn't take much begging (ha, where do you think he got the idea in the first place?) since Creep E. Bunny didn't make for really great pictures, but on our way out the door a nice lady told Calvin the Easter Bunny would be coming to our house that weekend, at which point he walked back to Creep E. with a very expectant look on his face and I had to explain that it was all just a figure of speech.  Keeping no secrets we'd already told him the bunnies would just be people wearing costumes, so I'm sure he expected the guy to actually show up for drinks and hors d'oeuvres or something.  I actually had far less difficulty getting him out of the mall display where, while the bunny was much more inviting, the guy doing the jig behind the camera to make kids smile for their photo op was a little iffy.  Calvin refused to take his eyes off that guy and I'm sure he was thinking something along the lines of "what institution did they just let him out of?" or at least that is what I was thinking.  I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't do these crazy things if I wasn't a scrapbooker, but Calvin had fun just the same.

Having gotten the bunny visits out of the way, then, we spent the latter hours of Saturday decorating eggs.  I say the latter part because the earlier hours were spent pretending it was fall.  Who tailgates in the spring?  Well, actually, tens of thousands of people this year, that's who.  We've attended a handful of Michigan Spring Football games in the past, most of which amounted to a sprinkling of giddy tailgaters in the Chrysler lot, but this year was a whole different animal; an animal that wrapped itself all the way around the stadium in what had to be a three hour line just to get into the locker room for a quick tour.  We opted out of that one, visited the inside of the ever-changing stadium (Calvin's first visit to that part of town!) and then retreated to our usual fall tailgating spot to enjoy the usual tailgating treats.  Ahhh we love our tailgating crowd!  But that brings us back to the Easter eggs, which was a resounding success.  Who knew an almost three year old could color and dye eggs without making a mess?  The whole hard boiled bit helps a lot I am sure (doubly so when you hear about the egg hunting situation), but the dyes and crayons stayed exactly where they ought as well.  I was incredibly impressed, but I still would not have ventured such an activity while in our church clothes on Sunday.  Instead we spent our dressed up Sunday afternoon going for a (muddy) walk on our (muddy) path to take some family pictures (which you already saw) before the extended family arrived for an Easter party.  We then followed up said walk with a (slightly muddy) egg hunt in the back yard.  You know how I mentioned the hard boiled-ness of the eggs?  Calvin did a great job finding the eggs, and really seemed to get a kick out of finding each one, after which he dropped, and I really mean dropped, if not half threw, each one into the basket.  Out of a dozen eggs I think three survived un-cracked.  Did I mention that we will be eating potato salad for every meal this week? 

Ahhh Easter.  We hope yours was as beautiful as ours.  With love, from the Ophoffs.

Monday
Apr132009

Ahhh, Monday

We had a wonderful Easter and hope you did, too.  We have lots of pictures from our fabulous weekend, which included a tour of the ever changing UofM stadium, spring game tailgating, and of course the quintessential pictures of Easter, but until I have time to edit and upload them, here are a few family pictures I took (via tripod and timer) during the beautiful spring weather yesterday.

Sunday
Apr122009

Happy Easter to all, and to all a blessed day!

Wednesday
Apr082009

Window Art

Who knew windows could be so much fun?  My mom talks about a time in her childhood when her father, my Papa, painted their family's front window every Christmas with an elaborate seasonal scene.  Although I vaguely remember seeing a picture of this phenomenon, I would greatly love to have seen it in real time, in real life.  But the days of window fun are far from past, they have just moved on to far less artistic (and messy) endeavors, this being the age of static cling decoration.  Did you know that window cling art can provide half an hour of fun or more in a single sitting?  What glee, what enjoyment, what total diversion.  I do, however, recommend washing the windows first (especially if you have a dog with a window-height nose).

Monday
Apr062009

Spring was last week. This is today.