If you were to ask me what my favorite holiday is I would have to say Easter, hands down! I love everything about Easter! Every year my aunt Patty has an Easter party out at her house. Our whole family loads up, goes to church and then to Patty's house for amazing food, fellowship, egg hunting (little kids and BIG kids) and THE AMAZING RACE! The amazing race is just like the show on T.V. you are on teams and you must race to find the clues and then compete to finish each task. The great thing about the race is that you can be in dead last up until the last task and then still win! This year we had to wheelbarrow two eggs without breaking them (it took me four times and Sean twice), make a bunny headband (they had to match perfectly), use chopsticks to fish pennies out of jello (by the time Sean and I got there our jello was frozen), dig through a bucket of rice and find four colored pieces of rice, and then throw a Frisbee through three obstacles. Sean and were in dead last until the Frisbee throw, then we moved up to second place!
It is such a blast! That and hunting Easter eggs. I think it is so funny that we have a little kid Easter egg hunt and then have a big kid Easter egg hunt (that is all of us cousins), we are just not ready to grow up! Also on the big kid Easter egg hunt my aunt has written our names on three eggs to ensure that we at least end up with three eggs a piece. If you have ever been around my family you know that when there is a race or a game everyone is out for blood! I have the best memories from all of our Easters together as a family! I am the worst Easter egg hunter in the world! I seem to be extremely slow at finding the eggs, or maybe because it is a "race" to find them I get discouraged and can't think straight. One year, I had a basket full and I fell and my eggs went everywhere. My cousin Greg came and stole all of my eggs on the ground. Haha! I remember being so sad! Needless to say that I think Ilya is going to be following in my footsteps. This was her FIRST Easter egg hunt. I had been putting eggs in her basket for her and she pulled on the basket and the eggs fell on the ground. Her (second) cousin, Allie, came running up and said "Ilya, you better hurry and pick these up before someone steals them!". Allie then proceeded to pick up Ilya's eggs and put them in her own basket and then run away. I wish I could have caught it on tape! It was so funny!

O.K. enough talk - on with the pictures!













Ilya's first Easter egg hunt.

Out of all the eggs she goes after a rock!