Snapshots of Our Life: Easter bunnies, Jelly Beans and Silly String

We had a long, fun Easter weekend. I love family weekends. I have today off, and I'm hanging out at home with my twinkies. We are recovering from our Jelly Bean hang overs! They are sitting at the table with me playing with the play doh that was in their Easter baskets. On Saturday we went to visit the Easter bunny, and they had a little petting zoo, face painting, balloons...
Emma was like the animal whisperer, she LOVED the animals, and loved feeding them, right out of her hand. She was really upset when we moved on from the petting zoo. Drew on the other hand, was not too thrilled with it. He hated the animals eating out of his hands and he pretty much just hung around next to the little bunny. (Which by the way I wouldn't be surprised if the poor bunny had heart failure, it was traumatized and shaking, with a bunch of little kids reaching their hands in to play with it.)

Drew and his little bunny friend. & Emma feeding the goats

Visiting the Easter Bunny

After our Easter bunny visit, Andrew took Drew to a live production of Thomas the Train. He LOVES Thomas. Andrew said it was like a musical.
That night when we all got home, we cooked filet Mignon on the grill, made Parmesan potatoes and corn on the cob - and... fresh sliced strawberry shortcakes with french vanilla whip cream!

I have had a few people ask about the Parmesan potatoes - so I'll put it on here.
I slice potatoes really thin (You can use any type of potato.) Depending on the size of the potato I will usually use 3 or 4 small to medium size potatoes. But obviously it depends on how many people you will be feeding. The thinner you are able to slice them, the easier they cook on the grill.
I put them in a big bowl and mix oil (I usually do a mix of olive oil and a little vegetable oil) I dump some garlic salt, and seasoned pepper, and a lot of grated Parmesan cheese into the bowl with the potatoes and oil and mix it together really well so that all of the potato slices are covered. I have also put parsley or basil in there as well, depending on what I have in at the time. Lay out a few large squares of a foil, and I put a small bundle of the potato slices on top of each piece of foil. (Hint: Spray the foil with Pam cooking spray first to avoid them sticking to the foil) I will usually spoon a little extra oil & Parmesan mixture from the bottom of the bowl over each bundle. Wrap them up in the foil - and put them on the grill. Andrew does the grill part so I'm really not sure of exact cooking time, but you can open the bundles and check on them occasionally to see how soft the potatoes have gotten. You can also put little pads of butter in between the potatoes before they go onto the grill, which makes them extra yummy.... but I avoid doing that most of the time because of the extra fat it adds. ;)
And that's it. We like making those when we grill steaks on the grill. It goes really well together.

After dinner we decorated eggs! We debated as to whether this was a good idea or not, and... against our better judgement we decided to let them dye and decorate eggs. So, aside from spilling dye, and not understanding that the eggs are still fragile, even though they are hard boiled - we pretty much had every one of them broken by the time we were done. But, they had fun and that's all that matters. And, we have some pretty cool eggs to show for it!

And then, the Easter Bunny made a visit to our house.

They got movies, fruit snacks, bubbles, play doh, slinkies, (I don't remember what else.) and probably more sugar than they needed. Emma got a new camera and Drew of course got a few race cars. And they each got a little golf club set.

There were about 40 eggs, and I must say.... the egg hunt wasn't totally successful. After they found the first couple, they weren't really that interested in finding more. Eventually we were able to get all of the eggs, but it took a while. They were too distracted by their Easter baskets and whatever was in the first few eggs that they found to have any interest in looking for more eggs. Next year will be different I'm sure.

Later in the day we went over to my parents, and what do you know... the Easter bunny had also made a stop there! These kids are a little bit spoiled... Andrews parents also sent a big Easter package this week with all of the kids favorite things, my grandma sent an Easter tin full of goodies for them, and Aunt Peg sent them a bunch of fun easter things last week.

Emma eating treats out of her basket at Mimi & Pops.

It was funny... she kept referring to 'peeps' at 'Petes'. She was eating her Petes.