A Georgia Girl in Germany

What a wonderful Easter! Benjamin had slept with me the night previous, so when he awoke, he gently tried waking me up...although he wasn’t ready to give me the requisite three kisses to do so. Shortly after he began his campaign, MacKenzie came in, gently suggesting that I could stay in bed a little longer. Benjamin wasn’t sold on that idea, so he then gave me the requisite three kisses urging me to get out of bed. I figured something must be up when MacKenzie repeated at least three more times that I could stay in bed. Momentarily, Zachary walked in with a tray serving me breakfast in bed. How sweet! Those were the best scrambled eggs, bacon, toast and orange juice I’ve ever had! Partly because I usually don’t go all out making breakfast for myself like that, but mostly because of the huge serving of love that accompanied it.
After church and lunch, MacKenzie convinced Nana to help her plant some more flowers outside (she hit her up within two hours of her and Papa’s arrival on Friday to plant the first batch). Before the afternoon was over, Zachary and MacKenzie had weeded a good section of the garden area outside our apartment, added fresh topsoil and planted some mixed cosmos seeds. MacKenzie and Nana also filled MacKenzie’s second planter with seeds for smaller flowers.


We also had to take time to dye Easter Eggs (yes, we ran out of time in previous days...story of my life). Each of the kiddos was going to have six eggs to dye (18 total -- the max number of boiled eggs we figured we’d be able to eat in the next week). Unfortunately, as Benjamin was getting ready to put his last one in the green cup, he dropped it. MacKenzie didn’t miss a beat, and offered him one of her un-dyed eggs. As he said “thank-you” to her, he also dropped that one. He was distraught that the eggs kept dropping out of his hand. Zachary already had all of his six either dyed or being dyed, but MacKenzie was saving one of hers for me to do. When I asked her if I could give Benjamin my egg, she paused, then hesitantly handed it to him…and we made sure that one didn’t drop out of his hand. She was a wonderful, compassionate big sister, and her big heart truly shined in that moment.

After we finished coloring the 14 eggs (we didn’t want to pickle the other two), we brought the dye to the sink so Benjamin could experiment by mixing the colors together. I remember MacKenzie getting the silly giggles when she was about his age and we did the same thing, so I wanted to see his reaction. It was a little more subdued from her response of yesteryear, but he enjoyed it…especially when he spilled some of the blue dye on my thumb and turned it blue! I was expecting all the dye to turn brown when the five colors were mixed together, but they all turned a deep forest green color that almost would have been worthy of using to dye an egg (the original green we had was more of an olive green).

As tradition has it, we had a few indoor Easter Egg hunts as well. Of course, by the time we got everything else done, it was after supper and dessert, but the kids didn’t seem to mind. I expect we’ll have a few more hunts over the next few days as well...especially as we find the last elusive eggs that I'm sure we missed finding during the original hunt.

Hope you all had a wonderful Easter!

Labels: Benjamin, MacKenzie, Nana and Papa, Zachary