happy easter, take 2

okay, so let's just pretend it's not been almost two weeks since easter. just for fun. mmkay?

and prepare for a major onslaught of bean pics in this post. you've been warned.

oh! before we begin, i'd taken the teen and a couple of friends to the mall the thursday before easter - while they were still on spring break. they split apart from me to go look at dresses for their upcoming promotion ceremony (!) and when we met up again, the teen was lugging quite a large...thing, wrapped in plastic and looking quite cumbersome. and sheepish.

why?

because she'd obviously had some cash burning a freaking hole in her pocket and decided that she absolutely had to have this:

she assembled it as soon as we got home, put on her twilight shirt, and then we watched the movie. again. and i swear to you, every time i turned around (because he had to watch the movie with us in the living room), i jumped a little. as you can see, it's life size. and pretty stinking creepy when you aren't expecting it. oy. he's now kicking it in her room, next to cap'n jack sparrow. i'm sure there are some interesting conversations in there when no one's around.

now, on with the easter festivities.

the ILs always go all out for easter, and this year was no different. there were giant easter baskets for both girls, chock full of fun stuff carefully chosen by MIL and lovingly packed into cute containers. the bean didn't hesitate for a moment before digging in.

she loves books, so she was happy to find a few in her basket (and so was i!):

but MIL pointed out something even more fun, and she dropped that book like a hot potato.

i was amused to see that the toy companies are finally realizing that their ridiculous packing methods were totally out of control. instead of the zillion twist-ties and zip-ties and other fasteners that are completely impossible to undo without sustaining some sort of injury, they finally got wise. all i had to do was turn these little things around to match the diagram, and they popped right off. and then the toy came right out!

between texts, the teen helped her sister go through her stuff and check it all out.

the teen didn't inherit any of her mother's AW tendencies at all. she waited until no one but me was watching, and then she dug into her own bag of goodies.

again, MIL's efforts were apparent as she opened her card to find her favorite boys featured prominently.

everybody loves pez!

i helped FIL with seasoning the steaks for the bbq:

and then we all trooped out into the backyard, where we spied tons of these scattered around everywhere:

the bean had no idea what it was all about or what to do, but she thought everybody was being pretty silly.

bubbles!

digging for treasure!

she finally decided to pick a couple of eggs up and shake 'em to see what the fuss was all about.

there were lots of them to gather up.

the rest of us amused ourselves in other ways.

pretty soon, we sat down to the table and had our easter feast.

the bean had her own special silver fork and spoon to eat with, too.

that's all, folks!