What We Did for Easter 2017

I can’t believe that’s Easter over with, the next time a term ends LM will have finished her first year at school! The Easter holidays seemed to last forever, probably because we managed to cram so much into two weeks, including LM having the dreaded chicken pox for 7 of those days (technically 9 as she had two days without spots). Now she’s been back a day the holidays feel like they never happened. Crazy huh? Of course I’m already looking forward to May half term as we have two days in London with a friend from Shanghai and we have two days in Disneyland Paris! It’s definitely all that will keep me going until then as I really miss LM during school time.

So what did we get up to in Easter? Well before LM came down with chicken pox we had a day away to Newcastle for the Quentin Blake Inside Stories exhibit along a with a fairly disasterous meal at Ask, but since I’ve blogged about both of those I’ll skip forward to Easter weekend which I haven’t shared yet. LM was in the middle of her bout of chicken pox but since my sister, parents and I have had it, and my sister is desperate for my nephew to get it we could still spend the weekend with them, yay! I was starting to go stir crazy. Unfortunately Easter Sunday saw my dad in hospital but he insisted we have an Easter brunch without him for the kids. It’s funny the things you force yourself to do for the kids.. but in a way I’m glad we did it and over a week on my dad is on his way to recovery and fingers crossed better health than he’s been in for a while.

As usual the North East weather let us down, but thankfully my sister has a lovely spacious home for us to still enjoy the fun and games we had planned. We had a deal, my sister bought the decorations, I put together the Easter basket and my mum contributed to the food and the whole thing felt so wonderful and festive, I just felt bad my dad had to miss it all.

My sister spent weeks collecting Easter decorations and games from places like B&M, Home Bargains and the supermarkets. She loves putting together a party and even convinced my parents into a Halloween one where we all dressed up. I loved the chocolate egg and spoon race, it was hilarious watching her race with my nephew as they’re both notorious cheaters and seeing my mum run was funny too. They also did an Easter egg hunt where we hid numbered paper eggs that they traded in for chocolate so no one would fight.

Food wise we picked up some frozen pastries from Iceland. These were perfect as we could just cook them from frozen and since no where was open Easter Sunday it meant we didn’t have to worry about keeping them fresh. We also had fancy meats, cheese, a part baked baguette, chocolate filled crepes for the kids, strawberries and champagne with orange juice. We ate about 12 and then spent the rest of the afternoon eating Easter chocolate.

Last year while in Florida over Easter I was introduced to the concept of the Easter bunny bringing an Easter basket. In the past we simply had chocolate eggs gifted from the family and a pacey new outfit. I really loved the basket idea so we went with that. The kids are really into Pokemon at the moment so I went with Pokemon themed getting them a small egg, a colouring book, sticker book, cards, a DVD and some giant bubbles. They went down a treat. I would have loved to have got them a plush each or some figures but due to LM having chicken pox it was all very last minute and I ended up spending a small fortune in WH Smith when I could have got it all for half the price on Amazon if I hadn’t forgot. They did get an assortment of Easter eggs along with a Moana DVD each from my parents. Quite the haul for two five year olds!

On Easter Monday my mum and I took the kids to roll the boiled eggs they’d decorated during the week. LM was still under quarantine but she really needed some fresh air so we picked a spot right at the end of the village my parents lived in where she wouldn’t come into contact with anyone. I’m going to blog all about our experience with chicken pox but the annoying thing is apart from the first couple of days LM didn’t actually act sick but we couldn’t go anywhere where she could pass it on. Thankfully while we were there we didn’t come into contact with anyone so she got to enjoy rolling (or throwing) her eggs. Sadly the weather once again was the usual school holidays let down with big black clouds and a cold wind.

Despite the illness that our family seemed to go through that weekend, we had a nice Easter. We didn’t get everything done on our list due to the chicken pox outbreak but we managed most thankfully! The second half of our Easter holidays mainly went around a very stressful doctors visit (which LM obviously got the okay to fly) and a trip to Disneyland Paris which I’m sure I’ll write a lot about on the blog over the next few weeks!

How did you spend your Easter?