The Easter Bells are .... leaving eggs?

Easter began when our friend Danielle brought the boys chocolate rabbits when she came by to visit, accompanied by her daughter and granddaughter, the day before Easter. Benjamin didn't want to eat his - he is very into "saving" things for later. I insisted that he eat part of it or I would not be responsible for its fate, so he reluctantly sawed its ears off with a knife.

And then put his head down on the table and pretend-sobbed, "Adieu ! Adieu !" (Do we see an acting career in his future?) 

For the first time ever, we let the boys dye Easter eggs. I wasn't sure how well it would work out with brown eggs and Wilton cake frosting dye, but they were happy with the results. Whether that has to do with how well it worked out or how low their expectations were, well... we'll just take it at face value. I let them color on them with white crayons first to make designs.

Once Frédéric woke up (how he managed to nap through the entire egg-dying festivities, I'll never know), the boys went out to hunt the eggs left outside by the Easter Bunny. Not the Easter Bells, this is an American household. 

I begged, pleaded and threatened in order to get the parental mythology post-Easter egg hunt photo - and I picked through the results to find the best one to share with you. Failing that, I picked the silliest one instead.

Easter Bells, you ask? Well, according to Wikipedia:

Church bells are silent as a sign of mourning for one or more days before Easter in The Netherlands, Belgium and France. This has led to an Easter tradition that says the bells fly out of their steeples to go to Rome (explaining their silence), and return on Easter morning bringing both colored eggs and hollow chocolate shaped like eggs or rabbits.