"Yes Day"

We had such a great Easter! After our neighborhood Easter egg hunt on Saturday was cancelled due to the first rain Phoenix has seen in 2 months, Mike and I hid several dozen eggs all over our house after the kids went to bed that night. We asked Ryan not to gather the pink and purple eggs (to give Kaylin a chance to "find" some eggs, too) and the kids took it so literally, that any time Kaylin found an egg of any other color, she'd put it in Ryan's basket. When it was over, her basket was ONLY pink and purple. The kids had SO much fun finding the eggs...I love how excited they get at their ages!

Then during breakfast, Mike read through the story that came with our Resurrection Eggs. (the donkey has been missing for two years, but we make do - I guess we started the eggs with Ryan when he was too young.)

We had a smaller crowd for dinner - only 14 of us total - which ended up being very relaxing. After we ate, Mike and his brother re-hid all of the kids' eggs in the backyard for a second hunt.

So my point...the title of this post was "Yes Day" because yesterday was the first time I've had a no-holds-barred "yes" answer all day long. "Mommy, can I have this piece of candy?" "Yes." "Can I have another cupcake?" "Yes." "Can I have some more jelly beans?" "Yes." You get the idea.

Were they on a crazy sugar high all day? YES. But it wasn't unmanagable. (that was a double negative...) I want them to have the freedom to control themselves by themselves on special occasions, especially since I'm sort of a food Nazi all year long. I want them to feel a little sick to their stomachs to realize why I say no to their crazy requests sometimes. (okay, fine - most of the time) I was the type of kid who threw away my Easter candy at Halloween and my Halloween candy at Easter. I enjoyed it for a few days, then kept it to eat later, but never did. I guess I wasn't a candy person.

Yesterday was fun. It was freeing for me to say, "yes" all day and I laughed at the kids' reactions when they tried to push the envelope and I still didn't turn them down. Ryan asked this morning, "Do we get to eat candy all day again today?" Um, no. We're back to one treat before naps and one treat after naps. But we'll likely have dessert every night after dinner because we have Easter cake, cupcakes, sugar cookies and TWO leftover pies from yesterday. Bring on the bedtime meltdowns!