Oops, I did it again!

Just one too many things piled up...all GOOD things of course, but one too MANY.  And I got a smack down of a cold to remind me why balance is so important.  But you know, sometimes you've just got to tell 'balance' to take a hike and just ride the wave of insanity until it crests and you can breathe again.    Otherwise, how would you enjoy all of THIS in one week...

A fantastic visit from the blonde bombshell known as cousin Melissa.

She really blended in so seamlessly that it was hardly as if we had a visitor at all, just an extra one of 'us'!

The kids were really cheeky toward the end of the week, and she noticed, saying "It's probably because I've been here so long".  That's when I clued her in that this is what they are really like, and now they'd truly accepted her into their wolf pack because they weren't even pretending to be cute and sweet, anymore!

My second stint as an Art Awareness volunteer for Molly's class also came up this week.  My team needed to give a presentation on Paul Cezanne sometime in the third quarter.  We managed to sneak in just under the finish line during the very last HOUR, of the very last DAY, of the quarter.

And if I do say so myself, my Smartboard presentation (which I did all by my ownself!) was rather captivating.

And it worked!!!  Over dinner that night, Molly was able to remember that Cezanne was a...

- Painter from France

- Believed that everything was made of basic shapes like the cone, cylinder or sphere

- Was called the Father of Modern Art because his ideas were a bridge between Impressionism and Modern Art (she might have had a smidgen of coaching on this answer)

- Loved to paint apples

Those apples were the lynchpin of the whole production. My partner Rifqa (pronounced RIV-kuh, she's Palestinian-American by way of Jordan) brought apples to share after the kids used them as inspiration for their art project.  That was the only icebreaker we needed!

We had the kids use oil pastels to color apples and a basket, and then glue the pieces together on spiffy construction paper to create a still life like the ones Cezanne favored.

Wanna know why he favored them?

Of COURSE you do!

Cezanne was such an anal, obsessive, hard core artist, that he had to study his subject for AGES until he finally got it painted on canvas.  No person could ever sit still as long as he needed them to, except for himself, which is why he had over 20 self-portraits to his credit.  But apples, and pears and oranges, would sit still for as long as he wanted.  And even THEN, they would sometimes rot before he'd completed his work.  He didn't even SIGN many of his paintings because he felt he could still 'perfect' them more.

Now that's dedication folks.

As for our budding artists, they LOVED using oil pastels...

Molly sits at a table with Madeleine, Sid and Peyton.  They were a very artistic bunch.

But mostly, they loved the APPLES!!

The kids did a great job, learned some, and had fun too I think.  I know I had a ball, even if I hadn't slept in three nights and was high as a kite on cold drugs.

Then we were finished and school was out for Good Friday!  We said goodbye to Melissa and hello to Party City, to find final supplies for the neighborhood Easter Egg Hunt.  

About two weeks before Easter, my neighbor Kris and I realized that with our neighborhood social director, Nancy, having moved to Maryland, no one else was taking the reigns on making some bunny magic happen, so we threw one together last minute and it was FANTASTIC!!!

40 kids, 800 eggs, one really awesome local park, and a lot of neighborhood spirit.

These were the little guys in the 1-4 age range.  Those 4 year olds cleaned UP!

L-R, Ben, Colin Singer and Mario Valente

The big kids went next...

There were complaints that last year's egg hunt was "too easy" with the eggs laid out in the field at the end of our street.  So this year we moved over to Knoch Knolls park.  We rented the upper grove, which is surrounded by forest.  And we made them go DEEP looking for those eggs, especially the elusive GOLDEN eggs that had actual money in them.  

A buck wrapped around four packs of Smarties?

 They were foaming at the mouth trying to find those!

Geno found one!

While we waited for the sun to go down for our last egg hunt of the day (a flashlight hunt no less!) we perfected roasting S'mores cones on the fire.  You take an ice cream cone, fill it with marshmallows and chocolate chips, roll it in tin foil and toss it on the fire (but not on the actual flames - more on the outskirts in the embers).  After a few minutes, you get ooey gooey goodness in a holdable container that doesn't make a mess (well, at least not as much as a real s'more).

Molly was a fan!

We even got rained on, but the kids were resourceful and took cover in the wood shed.

The moms just got wet.  We didn't melt :)

The kids were sweaty, filthy and exhausted when we rolled them into bed around 9:30 that night, but it didn't stop them from waking at 6:30am yelling

COOKIE CAME!!!  COOKIE BROUGHT US BASKETS!!!  COOKIE WAS HERE!!!!

"Cookie" was the name Ben and Molly gave to the rabbit that lived in our yard last summer.  Conclusions have been jumped to, but everyone is on board that Cookie must be the Easter Bunny because he loves us so much!

Cookie even knew that two little boys in our house had a hankering for Light sabers.

And that a certain little girl at our house had been yearning in earnest for this Heart 4 Hearts doll named Nahji, from India.

After baskets came church, and after church came BRUNCH!

We decided to try Hugos Frog Bar this year.  They had a really nice brunch buffet, though it was a bit crowded.  Frankly, there's no way any brunch EVER would top the Drury Lane brunch we enjoyed with Molly's Irish dancing school, so Hugo's had some stiff competition.  Still, the chocolate-dipped strawberries and endless piles of crisp bacon made the young Malletts very, very happy indeed.

Afterward, we roamed around downtown Naperville to take a few pictures.  We even snuck in a walk on the river walk like last year, much to a certain complaining nine-year-old's dismay.

The tulips were blooming!

Ben took this one - he did a great job!  And even left his thumb in view so we'd know he was there too :)

You can see from the picture above how pleased Jack was with the shenanigans.  That's the theme of his life these days.  If he's not complaining (LOUDLY, and with adjectives)...well, then he's asleep.  But that's another story for another day.

This is the story of how we went home, changed into "comfy clothes" and did....absolutely nothing!  It was GRAND, let me tell you!  of course we missed our friends and family back in Massachusetts, that goes without saying.   But as a Plan B?  Laziness and Comfy Pants on holidays is about as good as it gets.

HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE!!