Our Easter Bunny Brings Paint

I freely admit that I use Easter as an excuse to buy my kids presents. Their Easter baskets are like Christmas stockings - as in, "Really? My truckload of love is supposed to fit in those? HA!" But I do have a reason. I rarely buy my kids random presents throughout the year, and both of their birthdays are within three weeks of Christmas. I want to buy them presents in the middle of the year, and Easter helps with that.

So, Easter morning represents a small present-palooza in our house. Seriously, Ella was still mid-flight as she grabbed at her first pink present.

I will say, though, that the presents the Easter Bunny brings are useful. He rarely brings toys. He brings crafts supplies, gardening supplies, sports equipment, that sort of thing. I mean, how can I feel guilty for giving my kids a bug catcher and a new pink watering can when those things help them enjoy the outdoors more?

And an orange baseball bat and blue jump rope for Peyton. And a pink baseball bat and pink jump rope for Ella. I can't feel guilty. It's awesome. The jump rope was Peyton's favorite gift of the day - definitely $1 well spent.

And Hello Kitty socks that make Ella's eyes light up like this:

And how could I not get Ella her first Big Girl scissors when Peyton got his first scissors on Easter 2 years ago? And they really needed some new shirts and bubble bath.... There was more, but you get the idea.

The only actual toys - foam swords. We tried forever to keep toy weapons out of our house. When Peyton was really little we didn't talk about guns or shooting or watch anything on TV that involved weapons. You know what? It doesn't matter. Before I knew it, Peyton was shooting his pretend finger gun. He would find a stick and turn it into a sword. Now I've just given in. I don't care. Go ahead and judge.

After all the presents were opened and the Easter eggs were found we sent Peyton and Ella into their rooms to open their curtains. And guess what they found - cans of paint! The exact color that they had each picked out just a few days ago when they went to Lowe's with James. See what I mean? Useful presents! And they were SO EXCITED!

We moved into this house a little over a year ago and we had yet to paint over the existing colors of their rooms. Ella's room was a light yellow and Peyton's was a light blue. They weren't bad colors, by any means, but we are big fans of big color and we had been wanting to paint for a while. So what did I do with my Easter Sunday? I painted Peyton's room bright green. And what will I be doing tomorrow? Yep, I'll be painting Ella's room bright lavender.

Paint might seem like a boring present. But let me tell you, all day long Peyton kept saying, "Thank you so much for painting my room, Mommy! I love it!"

And check this out! You might think that with all these gifts the whole meaning of Easter is lost on my children. Ha ha sucker! Last night I asked Peyton what we do on Easter. I thought he would say, "Look for Easter eggs, open presents, eat candy, bask in the commercial glory of Easter..." because that's exactly what I was thinking. You know what he said? "We celebrate Jesus." And I swear, today he actually set those foam swords in the shape of a cross and told me all about how Jesus was crucified and then he disappeared and then came back - "Like magic!" And THAT is why we send Peyton to Catholic preschool - so that I can focus on the fun stuff and they can teach the stuff I neglect to mention. It seems to work out well.

Happy Easter!