Best Shot Monday: Easter Traditions

Yes, once again, I'm doing my best shot Monday post on a Tuesday. :-) I've been battling the mother of all miserable colds and wanted to do nothing but lay around the house yesterday. I'm feeling a little more human today!  Battling through the sneezes, we spent Easter down at the lake in Keystone Heights with Benny's extended family. What a great tradition this is! That's the redheads with their cousin Lily on the ever popular tire swing, above. To me, this shot just captures pure joy; it's my favorite of the day.

The Easter egg hunt has been a long standing tradition, including the "prize" egg and the pot of cash that comes along with it. Hundreds of eggs are hidden in the woods on the property, some more easy to find than others for the youngest kids. The only catch is that if you find the prize egg, you must endure a raw egg being broken on your head before you get the pot! This Easter's prize went to two-year-old Jackson, and he didn't even flinch when that egg was broken on his head! That's the spirit!

A new tradition we started the past couple years is the Easter bonnet competition. We decorate our own hats and compete against each other for the best bonnet. Since it's done by silent ballot, it's all about getting people to vote for you.  As you can see from Sarah's hat (above on the right), she glued candy all over her hat and had planned to walk around to everyone with her basket of candy asking for votes. Alas, her shyness got the best of her and she chickened out.  Oh well, we still love our hats .... and now we have a quickly dwindling basket of Starburst and Tootsie Rolls...

As we prepare for our move to Tallahassee, we're making plans to spend more time down at the lake with the cousins.  Benny has so many great memories there and wants to create more of them for our girls.  He's even layed the groundwork for us to be able to take the camper down there and hook her right up! We've been spending Easter down there as a family since the girls were born, so they've become quite fond of that tire swing!