First things first, Lucy will only wear pink. That may or may not be obvious further on.

Easter was a big deal this year. For the first time since, well forever, I took the Saturday off. Ever since Lucy was born, I have been meaning too, and then I would forget. Now that she is old enough to enjoy holidays, I wanted to make sure to do something special with her. And so the idea of a neighborhood Easter Egg Hunt was born. I joined forces with my friends Maren and Leslee, and we threw a party for the whole neighborhood. It was so much fun, and I think super successful for a first go around. We made a block party of it at Maren's house, which she decorated beautifully, and her trees bloomed accommodatingly. We divided up the kids into age groups, hid a few special golden eggs in tricky places, blew a train whistle (why not?) and let the kids go at it. It was really so much fun, and nice to get to the know the neighborhood a little bit better.

I brought one roll of film, and unfortunately got so excited, I only took pictures of the set-up, Lucy, and her good friend Olive. But I think we probably had 60 people there. It was pretty awesome watching 30 or so kids run around like crazy, or like Lucy, cautiously picking up her eggs. Easter Egg hunting was followed by brunch, and the only boo, was to the two cars that drove through our barricades, going faster than the speed limit, knocking over garbage cans, and pulling our decorations along with them. Luckily, there weren't any kiddies, in the street, but seriously, who does that?

And here is Lucy in pink dress #2, and our own Easter Egg hunt after church. We dyed eggs the night before, but mainly Lucy just wanted to drink the dye water. We put a Tablespoon of oil in our dye cups to get the marble effect, which, come to think of it, couldn't have made it taste that good. I had pinned probably 20 different Easter Egg ideas, but ultimately went with the easiest and cheapest. I think they turned out pretty. Can you guess which color of egg was Lucy's favorite?

By the way, if you are ever interested in doing your own hunt like this, this is what we did and it worked well,

-We hand delivered the invitations. Luckily, our neighborhood is small enough, and we got them out early enough that people could plan on it, but not so early they forgot about it. About 10 days before the hunt -We had the parents bring a dozen eggs a couple days early for each kid that was participating -We limited it to 12 and under -Divide into age groups, so little kids don't get overwhelmed by older ones. We did 0-1, 2-4, 5-8, 8-12 -If you don't have a yard enough big enough (none of us did) get the permits for a block party. It's super easy, and you just need the permission from everyone on the street affected. Check with your local City department for specifics -We requested everyone bring a brunch item. I was afraid people were going to think we asked too much of them, but everyone came with smiles, and there was even someone doing a dutch oven casserole. Impressive. -We came 90 minutes early to set-up and hide the eggs -The rules were 12 eggs per kid, but we had extras (a lot people did more than a dozen eggs each), so we opened it up for a free for all after everyone got their dozen. But, we didn't realize at the time, that there were a few kids who were running late, and there were no eggs left. Next time we will make sure all kids are there before we open it up to everyone to go crazy. And maybe also still keep them in their eggs groups, since at that point the little kids were pretty much out of luck. First timers mistake. -Get bigger blockades, since some people by-passed the sign, and barriers. I wish I knew who you were! -Blow horn, that would have been fun, but luckily Leslee just happened to have a train whistle!