Maddie and  Amelia have to be two of the luckiest kids on earth!  Over the long weekend, we decided to head on out to Hong Kong for a second visit to Disneyland!  As Andy said, his first visit to Disney was at age 12-ish and his second visit was with the girls a few years ago!  Of course, there were tons of pictures and tons of videos from the trip so we decided to put it into a short movie below.

The Easter Bunny even managed to show up!

Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZHz4oKxaxQ

Three years and running Maddie has had her Easter in Shanghai.  This Easter is a bit different than years past…  in 2007, Maddie and Cooper had an Easter egg hunt in the backyard.  In 2008, Amelia joined us for the first time on Easter Sunday.  This year, Maddie and Amelia woke up to the Easter Bunny’s visit but she has a HUGE class party planned for later today so we’ll shake things up a bit!  Maddie was so excited to Amelia everything in her basket.  Don’t know if I’m mom of the year or not, but the both got a sucker before breakfast.  Hey, Easter only comes once a year!!!  Happy Easter girls!!!

When Andy came back from recruiting this year, he brought three Easter egg dye kits with him. Maddie has been staring at them daily, asking the question “Is it Easter yet mommy?” So… I finally hid them so that she would stop asking!

The Easter egg hunt at school brought it up again so when I finally answered yes to her question, she was thrilled! Not only did we have the traditional bright colors, but we had Tie Dye eggs and even better yet, she was able to write everybody’s name on each egg by herself! We finished the day off with an Easter egg hunt for Baby Eva and Cooper at our house – tons of stimulation for all and a great way to kick off Spring Break!

Happy Easter my peanuts!

So I’m pretty sure there were at least four major happening at school this week in Maddie’s class. There was a class party, a birthday party for one of the students, a Chinese class assembly and, of course, an Easter party. I was lucky enough to make it to ONE of these events for a few minutes and Andy was lucky enough to make it to ONE of these events. I guess this means we’re at .5! I’ll take it!!!!

Maddie and the other PK classes took advantage of the welcome change of weather and went for their first Easter egg hunt of the season. She is considered to be part of the older group of PK kids so when she offered one of her eggs to a little boy who had none, my heart filled with joy. On second look, she offered one of her BROKEN eggs, but it’s a step in the right direction!

Hope you had a great week with the adventures at school this week Maddie Anna!!

This year Easter has been the holiday that just keeps going and going and going… it’s been great, but it has been more life Easter week instead of Easter day with the numerous celebrations! First we celebrated Easter and school (twice), then we received an Easter basket from Grandma Dotty on Wednesday, then the Links had an Easter egg hunt Friday night, then we colored Easter eggs over the weekend at home for an Easter egg hunt at home and then we went to Sunday Brunch for yet another Easter egg hunt. That’s this entry in an “egg”shell so unless you want more details, stop reading now!

We actually boiled the eggs on Saturday but ran out of time for coloring because of the Annie musical. So when we woke up on Sunday, we got the colors and apple cider vinegar out for some serious egg coloring! Daddy wowed us with multiple colors on one egg and we all had our share of multicolored fingers! Maddie just laughed with glee yet took the task very seriously. Anything to do with art, she just plain focuses! After we colored eggs, we dressed in our new Easter dress that Tailor Zhu had made for Maddie and invited Cooper over for an old fashioned hunt.

Cooper being almost three years older than Maddie quickly found most of the two dozen eggs I had hidden in the back yard, but he slowed down a bit and started directing Maddie towards some eggs of her own. It was just a Spring morning with Easter dresses and birds singing… I really do think they came out to watch!

After the Easter egg hunt, we went down to the German Centre for Sunday brunch at Sysery…I’ll never be able to pronounce that name! We met two other couples there and sat as a group so the kids were able to play together. Maddie ate A LOT of food and then prepared for the final Easter egg hunt of 2007. As expected all of the older kids found the eggs filled with candy first which left almost nothing for the younger ones. Please know that I’m not complaining here – it’s just the way things go – Maddie will do the same when she gets older. But then the coolest thing happened. If you read yesterday’s blog then you’ll know what I mean. Hannah, the little girl who played Annie in the SAS musical, came up to Maddie and said, “here Maddie let me share my Easter eggs and candy with you.” She proceeded to fill Maddie’s bag and then skipped off. Maddie turned to me and said, “I like that Annie.”

Here come Peter Cottontail! All of these songs that I’ve long forgotten keep popping into my head all over again! Maddie had an Easter party at school today. Ah, yes, there’s that word that probably get one in trouble if they mentioned it in a public stateside school. Maddie celebrated EASTER at SCHOOL today! I’m being a bit obnoxious here, but I’m treasuring everything about life these days!

She made bunny ears, colored eggs, went on an Easter egg hunt, ate chocolate, ate even more chocolate…. did I mention she ate chocolate? It was such a special day for her because this really the first time she’s ever gotten it. Maddie loved it that both Andy and I showed up to share the time with her. We showed up just in time to have some chocolate cake for Narumi’s birthday part!!

After school, Maddie came to my classroom for an hour while my math students studied away around her. She simply sits at a student desk and works on her “homework” just like the other kids. It’s simple – I give her extra math worksheets and she traces the numbers. She loves it and she fits right in. All of my kids know Maddie well and she feels that she is one of them. Truly, she is 3 going on 13!

After school we came home to a beautiful afternoon. For the first time, we turned the water on let her play outside. I pulled weeds while Maddie played in the water and used her chalk to write all over the back patio.

The air is warm, the kids are laughing while riding their bikes, the birds are singing… Spring has truly Sprung and I hope we get to have more weekdays just like this one!