Over Achieving on Saturday, leads to an uggh Sunday.

I love holidays.  Actually, love might be an understatement.  It doesn't matter the holiday, I decorate and we do some sort of celebration.  St. Patrick's Day, 4th of July, Halloween, and of course the obvious ones like Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Easter proved no different this year, except I had 6 kids to entertain as opposed to 3.  My new siblings (13, 10 and 5 in ages) came down to celebrate with us, and with it being their first time experiencing a "Jensen" kind of holiday, I wanted to make it awesome for them.  So, on Saturday I had a list of activities for the kids to do, including:

-dying Easter eggs: 126 eggs to be exact- 21 for each child
-a confetti egg fight: A few days before I cleaned out 2 dozen egg shells, then stuffed them with confetti and taped the hole closed.
-a Resurrection Story scavenger hunt: outdoors on about 2 acres of land, ending at a real tomb Mike built in the forest. 
-a glow in the dark egg hunt: plastic eggs with glow bracelets and candy inside, hidden through out the yard.

Ok, as I write this I am thinking, "I am crazy. What was I thinking? Seriously."  I am not June Cleaver, but I tried to be. I actually had my house (except our master bedroom) clean, snacks for the kids made not bought, and I was showered, dressed and had make-up on.  (Obviously too much for one day.) One benefit to the day was I actually slept in until 9 and it was sunny outside, so that gave me energy.

making the confetti eggs

I woke up and needed to make the confetti eggs.  In my mind it was going to be easy.  All I had to do was cut tissue paper for confetti and stuff the eggs.  Ha!  Do you know how long it takes to cut confetti to fill 24 eggs?  42 minutes. Of cutting teeny, tiny pieces of confetti. 42 minutes. Thankfully being an art teacher in my early days had built up calluses on my fingers so I didn't get blisters from holding scissors that long.  I hadn't accounted spending over an hour to finish this project, but I pushed through. That was over achievement #1.

scavenger hunt

Next, I had to write all the clues for the scavenger hunt....this resulted in some deep concentration, of which I hadn't accounted for either.  My kids love scavenger hunts and I do it for them often, but my family knows that I tend to mess up the clues and my kids frequently come inside and say, "mom, this doesn't make sense.  We can't find the next clue!" With that bit of background information, you can imagine how much time I spent on this to make sure it wasn't messed up. After writing the clues I realized, I need props!!  Quick, Mike, can you build me a tomb in the forest?  I dug
through my linen closet to find something I could fashion into Jesus' garment, cut and old sponge and soaked it in vinegar, and went into the garage to get a hammer and nails (that's harder than it sounds being as our garage is a complete disaster).  Over achievement #2.

dying 126 eggs!

At this point, the family had arrived and they were chomping at the bit to dye the eggs.  I had to set up the table and needed to do it in a way that would allow them to be "creative" but catch all the messes of spilled dye.  I luckily had thought ahead and purchased a disposable table cloth from Target
for $3.00.  So, imagine 12 cups of dye on a table with 6 kids and 126 eggs.  This takes some managing and organization....another skill I had picked up from teaching.  It doesn't sound too bad at this point but add on the fact that I wanted them to all have the opportunity to make Pintrest inspired eggs, so I added rubber bands (of which they couldn't put on the eggs on their own, so I had to do it), gold dust to add (which I failed to remember it needed to be added AFTER the eggs had dried), and the traditional "magic" crayons (but I only had 2, which resulted in a patience building exercise for the kids! ).  Over achievement #3.

confetti egg fight

The activities had commenced and the scavenger hunt was a hit, but took all of 5 minutes. The
confetti egg fight was also enjoyed and much to my dismay only took about 45 seconds.  Four eggs per child wasn't enough and I will tell you that I will not be doing this next year unless I have pre-cut confetti!!

glow in the dark hunt!

Oh, and the glow in the dark egg hunt?  Yes, I forgot about that until 8:00 at night....and I also forgot that you need to stuff the eggs right before the hunt
so the glow in the dark bracelets will still be glowing.  Have you ever tried to stuff a glow in the dark bracelet into a cheap, plastic egg?  Not easy.  It took all of us about an hour to stuff the eggs.  So, our egg hunt happened at 9ish p.m. with children begging us to let them eat the candy from the eggs....wow, didn't think about that.  Over achievement #4.


By the time we got all the kids in bed it was after 11:00, and as I went to sit down for the first time all day, I remember I still needed to prepare 12 Easter baskets.  I screamed in my head the entire time I put the baskets together.

2 baskets for each kid

I awoke Sunday, made breakfast for the 6 kids....don't get excited, I really just handed out bowls and spoons and poured cereal.  We had our Easter Bunny egg hunt outside (positive point: this is the first time in 4 years that we have been able to have the hunt outside due to no rain!!!), and got ready for church.  After church, I looked at my mom and said, "we don't need to have an Easter dinner, right?  Just being together as a family is enough."  So, we nixed the ham, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole and sweet rolls.  THANK GOD.  For the rest of the day, we sent the kids outside, and I had the pleasure of cleaning.  It was that night, the kids realized how little time they had actually spent with Mike and I....they required extra cuddling that night.  I didn't mind because I missed them, too. That night, all the kids were so exhausted, they were asleep by 8:30 and I popped some melatonin and followed shortly after.

My lesson has been learned.  No more over achieving for me.  I would have much rather played outside with my kids all day and enjoyed the time as a family.  I would have much rather had energy on Sunday, instead of walking around like mommy zombie.  But I can say, for just this once, it was a fun experience and the smiles on my kids faces was priceless....though I could have produced the same smiles by simply wrestling with them on the trampoline and playing basketball in the driveway.

L to R: Bella, Ella, Annie, Sophia, JT and Ethan