Easter Baskets & Glow-In-The-Dark Egg Hunts

It's hard to believe I am backlogged a good 2 months.  I posted our beautiful pictures from Resurrection Day 2015, but I have yet to post the fun, traditional events that we do with the kids before (Saturday) or after church, on Easter Sunday.  We usually come home and eat or we go out to eat.  Then, we enjoy each other before making these traditions happen.  We do our best to make Jesus our focal point for the majority of our day.  The fun arrives after we have spent time worshiping our Savior and enjoying each other. The kids are always so excited and ask 100 times, "When can we have our basket hunt and egg hunt?"

The last few years, we have told the kids to hide in the bathroom.  We hide their baskets and on the count of three, they get to go run and search for them.  If it's pretty outside, we always do this outside.

 Ty is trying to play it "cool" by acting like it's not a big deal to him!

 You can slowly see the excitement creeping out the sides of his mouth.  Haha.

 "On your mark! Get set! GOOOOOO!"

 Wait! Is that a smile?  Uh-yay! Hahahaha.  Busted.

 Jax found his basket first.

Then Ty!

Then Sadie!

Finally Lilah! Oh my goodness! I just love her reactions to everything.  

She even took a step back, mouth dropped open and...

Then knelt down again to peak at everything.

 Ty's baskett!

 Sadie's Basket!

 Jax's basket!

 Lilah's basket!

Normally, their baskets are put together by dear friend Donna.  She is an older woman who used to work at "Love Baskets". Her assembly is just perfect, however her son had just passed away with cancer and I could not bring myself to ask her to do them this year!

 These were silly bunny pops! Lila's is upside down.

My three crazies.

Each of the kids received a colorful pin box.  Look at Ty's face showing up so detailed through the pins.

Liley's favorite basket item was her colorful, heart-shaped eye shadow.

Jax's was his fake poopie!

Ty said his favorite item was his "Who was Jesus" book.  He loves autobiographies/biographies. 

Later, the kids begged and begged and wondered when the egg hunt would happen.  I was trying to hold off until it became dark.  They didn't understand what was going on.  Finally, I told them that we were having our very first GLOW-In-The-Dark egg hunt.  

To have your own glow-in-the-dark egg hunt, just buy over 60 glow sticks.  Crack them, getting them to glow.

Fill empty eggs with glow sticks!

*Note: in order for the glow-in-the-dark egg hunt assembly to be "easy", I learned the hard way that you will need to fill an empty egg with a glow stick to go along with each egg you place a fun treat in.  Both the glow stick and the fun treat cannot fit in the same egg. *

The best part about this hunt is that NO ONE could really see anything except for glowing EGGS.  I couldn't even take pictures, that's how dark it was.  So... the "golden egg", which had $20 in it, was impossible to "find".  If you found it, you didn't know that you did until later, when you were opening all of the eggs you found.  

Look at how pretty they look in the basket, all lite up!

The kids were beyond excited.  The first time anything happens in our house, the kids just go crazy!!!! I did video record the hunt.  You can hear the kids just running frantically, in the dark backyard, with immense excitement.  I have to say... it really was fun.

 Tada! All done!

Then the best part... they went through their eggs.  There was cash... I think Liley found the golden egg.  

 Gift cards.

 Very limited candy!

 Confetti Eggs.

Fun pencil erasers that look like food and people AND a few other unique items.

I'm pretty sure this is an egg hunt they will NEVER forget.  Next year, I will make sure I do more eggs, so it will last longer. The hunt lasted about 5 minutes, which is pretty long, but I think it would have been fun to do like 120 glow sticks.

To see the video footage, click here.