Easter at la casa de sandra

A fine time was had by all. We met the grandchildren and their parents at the community swimming pool this morning, so that we could watch and admire the children's swimming prowess. Granddaughter (Jujube*) is nearly three, and she is a fearless mermaid. Grandson (Jumping Jack*) is just a year old, but he loves splashing in the water and floating on his back (with daddy's hands supporting him). As soon as he is laid on his back in the water, he begins to laugh. It's quite fetching.

After the swim, we all came back home, but I stopped along the way to fuel my car. When I got home, there was tension in the air. It turned out that the children had spotted their Easter baskets, but they weren't allowed to raid them until I got home. I got the baskets down (They contained a book for each child, some Fruit-to-Go, and Babybel cheeses**) and I laughed when Jujube's eyes grew round and she said "What is this?" "That's Easter grass." "Oooooh. Easter grass." It was purple. Maybe that was the fascination. Both children had a great time showering themselves with slippery purple grass for a few minutes. Then they started in on the fruit leather and cheese while I read to them from their new books.

Meanwhile, most of the grownups were gathered around a laptop in the living room, looking at holiday photos. We finally managed to get everybody dressed and ready to go, and we went out for a very good Chinese lunch. I think there was as much food on the floor as in the baby's mouth, but our waitress was very understanding. We tried to clean up, but she shooed us away.

While all this was happening, the dozen white (!) eggs I had cooked earlier were cooling. When we got home after lunch, we had a fine time making crayon patterns on the eggs, then dyeing them with red, yellow, blue, and green food colouring. Jujube had never worked with dyes before. She had fun dipping the eggs, but she had more fun moving the dye from one cup to another, teaspoon by teaspoon, to see what new colours she could create. The yellow dye was an early casualty. It quickly became a second shade of green. We finished before she managed to turn all the dyes brown. Then we put some of the eggs into the children's baskets. I kept some, though, so that we can take pink and blue and green eggs in our lunch for the next couple of days.

Everybody went home early in the evening, and I settled in to watch Little Dorrit Part 3. What a fine series Little Dorrit is. If you haven't seen it, and you get a chance to see the whole series, I highly recommend it. I heard about the series over at The Egalitarian Bookworm (Chick). I love the internet. (Come to think of it, I've probably raved about the Little Dorrit before.)

So. That was fun. I hope that all of you had as happy an Easter as I had.


*n.b. This is a true story. The names have been changed, to protect the innocent. ;>)

** It should be noted that I am not a cruel grandmother. I figured the children would be getting their share of candy elsewhere, and I happened to know that they really, really like cheese and Fruit-to-Go. And Babybel is sort of egg-shaped, right? Sort of.

One more thing: Once again, today's Poem-a-Day is full of visuals that just won't fit into the sidebar, so for the real thing, please click here.