)en's Log: Eggcellent

There's no denying, Easter is a pretty great holiday. I love it for a lot of reasons. Instead of blathering on though, I just thought I'd slap up some pictures. Happy Time of New Life and Beauty Once Again Returning to the World, aka Easter.

But before that, here is our one St. Patrick's Day decoration:

That's a leprechaun trap. Not a lot of love for the leprechaun in our house.

Since I celebrate that holiday .0001%, happily our neighbor did it for us. We were invited over for a green breakfast and the world's best treasure hunt ever. Julian and I were a little shell shocked. So fun.

But back to Easter, which really belongs in April but whatever.
Egg dying. Boy, there are some crazy dye kits in the world today. I actually found myself saying, "back in MY day, there was none of this! It was dump it in a cup of dye and see what happens." I tried to add an "old woman" timbre to the tone though.

This kit was great fun. You paint the eggs with teeny tiny paint rollers! Adorable. In this pic you can see the rollers to the side there.

I think that picture is capturing Julian coming down from his high of finally getting to decorate eggs. He crashes fast. But we did sort of paint rather frantically in our excitement. Each of us cares deeply about the eggs we did, or any art project we participate in, really. We all politely compliment each other on his/her art but secretly we love our own the best. I have been watching Julian grow up with artist parents (ha) and it is pretty awesome. He is always having museum exhibits where he displays all his stuff. The other day he drew still life drawings of objects in his room and i should probably blog about that because they are AWESOME. He had critiques for each one and explained the process. AAH, I was dying with so much love for this. Sorry, I get side-tracked. Back to our art:

All the eggs. I can't be bothered to rotate this lopsided pic.

The paint was strange and freakishly quick-drying. So fun! Thanks, NASA.

One of Sean's

Another one of Sean's. He got so excited when he made that brown smudge.
Only Sean gets excited at the color brown.

One of mine. It reminded me of Jupiter, as most things do.

Another one of mine. My very first egg. Tent stripe, i'll call it.


One of Julian's that I loved. So cool!

And then, friends, I made yet another of my dreams come true. We went back to the Goblin Valley for an egg hunt. YAY! It was sooo much fun. Hot dang, I wish I could give the whole world an egg hunt in Goblin Valley. There are three separate valleys there. We've only made it to two of them. Next time we'll try for the third. It honestly feels like being on another planet. I love it there so much. We had our first hunt in the first valley where the goblins and mounds are spaced further apart. Here are some pictures there. In this panorama you may see a couple of eggs. If you squint.

Got one!

This is the pathway down into the second valley where things are narrower, higher, and more clumped together. The views are just food to every part of my soul. I felt like I had fallen into a magic eye picture. Along our hiking we'd pause for sporadic egg hunts. It's just too easy. Too perfect. Infinite places to hide eggs.