3:27 AM

6 Apr to 9 Apr
Easter Weekend

dh has hols on Fri and Mon for this weekend. But he has 2 concert performances on Fri and Sat night. However, he did have quite a lot of fun with ds1, making a kite and flying it.

Fri saw us making clay again cos ds1 requested. Our big bucket of clay has only 1 more pkt left now. Even though he likes it a lot, I don't think I will be buying more clay anytime soon. The next pic aft this will show you why. Grrrrr...

1st: The stuff we made tog. ds2 asked for porcupine this time, so I made that. then i think it is pretty obvious which 2 were made by ds1, he said they are a bird and a wasp respectively. although the wasp is monstrous in size compared to the bird. the last one is made by dh. smooth. race car.

Next: I was doing something, either cleaning the kitchen or doing the laundry when I found them destroying the previous batch of clay pieces. them being the 2 kids, dh not involved, haha. remember the clay letters? well this is what I saw when I checked on them:

both were happily breaking the pieces up, and dismembering the ant parts, the antennae, the legs... when i questioned them, ds1 said ants have to break up their food and carry back to the nest. so they are helping the ant. and that's supposed to be its food (cos the coloured letters look like candy cane). what about the poor ant? only one leg left? "it was attacked by the wasp" came the answer.

scolded them for wasting clay but didn't get too upset cos it was a little amusing. but i did tell ds1 i wasn't going to buy anymore for a long time, since he doesn't take care of it properly.

After lunch, we soaked egg shells in vinegar so it will take up more paint. I did explain that to ds1. then we dried them. most pple do their painting and decor on hard-boiled eggs, but i cracked it and used it for lunch, cos it's just too useful. it will be wasted once both sons do painting on it, i know. so our eggs are different, got one cracked hole below. haha.

but the good thing is that we can paint the whole egg in one sitting, cos we can stick our thumbs into the hole.

then ds2 woke from his nap just in time to "help" paint the last egg. the paint dried v fast cos we only used a bit and it was absorbed into the porous shell almost at once. then they played with it. needless to say it broke in no time. so it was good i took a pic first. :-)

We don't celebrate Easter as a religious event because Jesus was not crucified and resurrected on this exact date. But Easter began as a pagan festival... read up a bit on the internet. Originated in Europe, perhaps Germany, where the Easter Bunny was a hare, and parents will reward good kids with candy in nests they made using their caps (boys) or bonnets (girls). So on Sunday they will wake up to find candy in their "nests".

Why eggs for bunnies? Cos folklore has it that this bird was turned into a hare and so it became a special hare that continued to lay eggs. So the decorating and hunting of eggs was carried out during Easter as fun activities for kids too.

Also, more importantly, the hare was a fertility symbol as it gives birth to a large litter every breeding season, and thus it was celebrated early Spring, when a good fertile year would be the wish for everyone.

In USA, as it became more and more popularly celebrated, the candies escalated to huge Easter baskets and hampers. Almost every park here has an egg-hunting event being organised for the county's kids and so on. A lot of Americans use this weekend for visiting friends and relatives too, not unlike our Chinese New Year visitation. Cos in church we were invited to someone's house, only we didn't go cos it was on Sun afternoon and both kids fell asleep right after worship.

Then the other church friends also mentioned they were visiting relatives that afternoon. These are just some of the candies both ds received in church on Sun morn.

Below shows the kite ds1 made. and them playing with it. wind was very very strong so it flew well, although it was made using MY baking parchment paper and straws as the spine. MY sewing thread was used as the string... and a twig as the spool. :-)

rainbows every day, do not worry for the morrow
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