Hoppy Easter!

Easter for my kids is a lot different from Easter when I was a kid. The Easter bunny brought me a new basket every year, with fake grass & a ton of candy. The Easter bunny was partial to See's chocolates. Yum! I loved Easter & still do. Any holiday with an excuse to gorge on chocolate is a good one in my book.

My kids know that they have to leave a basket out for the bunny (because obviously the bunny can't hop around carrying all those baskets). This year they left plastic eggs too (again...to help the bunny out). The eggs were eggs that they got in an egg hunt out at the playground & they'll be used again and then sent on to Goodwill or maybe Freecycled. I, I mean the bunny, decided that plastic grass was a big waste. So all that was bought was 2 bags of candy -- a small bag of gummy bears & a bag of marshmallow chicks. The bunny thought that just about everything else would lead to insane sugar overload (and thus domestic unhappiness) or was just too overpackaged for words.

I took a picture of one of the baskets. It is a basket that came with a grocery shopping toy set. We emptied out the veggies and left it for the bunny with some empty eggs. The bunny apparently hopped in during the night, filled the eggs, and left a small stuffed bunny to guard them. (The bunny is from the kids' toys... but they did not seem to notice).


So, for 3 Easter baskets, I spent 2 dollars and only made 2 pieces of trash. Two pieces too many, but still...

What's funny about this basket thing (besides the fact that a bunny comes during the night distributing candy) is that it just shows that kids don't really expect that much. I think that a lot of times adults outdo themselves on the trappings of the holidays, when what the kids really like is the mystery. Just like a birthday party in which the kid spends more time playing with the box than the present, it doesn't really matter what the basket looks like, or what exactly is in it (well... obviously candy) -- just the fact that the bunny shows up at all is amazing. I had the extra fun of listening to the kids whisper about the bunny, play with their stuffed bunnies, and chow down on marshmallows for about an hour in the middle of the night. That -- not plastic grass -- is what memories are made of.

Last Day of Unstuffing -- thank goodness!
So... 7 bags (at least) of stuff gone. I took it away today -- one bike trailer to the laundry room, another trailer full to Goodwill, and still some stuff to bring to the library. I took a picture. It's crazy how much stuff we had just junking up the place.

Today we added 5 giganormous nursing books (old editions), another pile of kids' clothes (including several pairs of pants), all my nail polish stuff (I never wear nail polish but have a whole container of polish, etc.) and some paint. I will try to find a good home for the paint so it doesn't end up getting thrown away or messing up someone's house.