Pastels Not Optional

This past weekend we had our 25th Annual Easter Park Day Celebration Gathering Event Day.

Tagline: Wear pastels or feel Easter's wrath.

(Bonnets optional but encouraged.)

Guests were politely asked/required to don their Easter finery, join us for a day of fun and egg-related activities in the park, and to bring us candy. Most did not comply.

As always, there was Easter frisbee.

(the pastel shirt qualifies it as Easter, obviously)

There was picnicking.

Somehow Heather managed to discover our location and crash the party. At least she stayed her distance. And wore a peach polyester frock. That can make up for almost anything.

And there was face painting. Oh, the face painting! Give me any excuse, no matter how weak or far-fetched, to paint my face and I'm in. I'm really looking forward to Mother's Day.

Jordan was an Easter egg. Velvet is our current in-house face painter and she is a master. Some of her past works include:

Seriously, quit your job and become my personal face painter already, Velvet. We'll discuss this further at home.

Velvet requested that I paint her face as a tiger/Easter parrot mix. I could not have failed her more and I think that is aptly reflected in her expression. My bad.

Zak was the Easter bunny. Not creepy at all with that moustache. Nope.

I presented my face as a blank canvas to Velvet and the result was her piece de resistance (her piece of resistance, to help out my non-francophones). I terrified little children everywhere and startled myself every time I looked in a mirror. And that, dear readers, is what Easter is all about.

"What? You wanna be our friend?! Great, let's get some face paint on you and we'll find you some pastels and then...oh. Not talking to us? Oh. That makes more sense."

After realizing that we would make no new friends in the park that day (don't tell me that people don't judge you by your exterior; it's all lies! They do! And face paint scares them!), we shook off our deep inner pain and partnered up for the THREE (3)-LEGGED RACE!

And that's when things got real.

We flew through the park legs abound, some of us faster than others.



Like I said, some of us faster than others. In case you can't tell, that's me and Eric way ahead in the distance. It's a little blurry because we were so fast, coordinated and athletic.



Amy and Rob didn't win, but it looks like they had a good time. That's nice, guys, but you don't get any trophies for having a good time. You don't get any trophies if you win either, but that's not really the point here. I think the point is that it was Easter and on Easter you wear pastels and do three (3)-legged races....right? Was that my point?



The champions laugh at the pitiful efforts of our competitors, marvelling at their lack of speed and agility, despite having three (3) legs to work with.

And by "champions," I mean that Eric and I won the three (3)-legged race. No doubt about that, just the honest truth.

The games continued into the day...



Velvet, Lazy and William all placed in the Easter Egg-on-Spoon relay race. I trust that this achievement has already been added to their resumes.

I know what you're thinking. You're wondering why I didn't place--well, I was photographing the entire event. Glad to clear that mystery up. Heather didn't place because she is not coordinated and peach polyester frocks were not made for running.

The non-winners of the Easter Egg-on-Spoon relay race. Non-winners is a nicer way of saying losers, because on Easter no one really loses. Except all of these people.

Time for the traditional Easter Egg Toss. From our many, many years of playing this sport, we have learned that it results in two (2) ways.




This is the most common ending.



...and this is the more amusing ending.

Egg yolk on your Easter finest--it had to happen to someone. Of course that someone wasn't me, as I believe I won the Easter Egg Toss as well. There is no photographic evidence of this but you can trust me.

Unlike past years, we did not include a deviled egg speed-eating contest. I will finally concede that it's just really not a great idea. SIGH.



Still delicious after eating 30? I don't see why not. If someone could please confirm this to me, it would be much appreciated!

We DID however hold our Extreme Easter Egg Hunt, where chocolate eggs were hidden everywhere in our house, no holds barred. And I do mean everywhere, from within a jar of curry powder, to inside a bag of cat food, to tucked into a tub of Vaseline (what? that's not gross), to the depths of our vacuum cleaner (again, not gross. EXTREME). It's my dream to one (1) day have an Easter egg hunt so extreme that participants will actually have to ply up floorboards and search deep within jars of peanut butter.

One day.



Not so extreme? Our Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Creepy-Easter-Bunny game. I didn't even feel excited winning it. But I did win.

For me, the most glorious part of our Easter celebration was that I completed four (4) kip-ups, a task which I've been trying to master for almost a year! It was captured by Eric's phone but the quality is poor since it was night and outdoors. All you can see are my eyes and face paint glowing as they fly through the air. I deemed it too scary to post, but if you've ever seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer, know that it was exactly like that.



Exactly. like. this.

I hope you all had lovely Easters as well. How many deviled eggs did YOU eat? Did you win any relay races? Do you think hiding an egg in a Vaseline jar is gross? (nah.) Hit me with your thoughts.

Happy Easter Tuesday, everyone!

P.S.--Lent is over; let's all eat chocolate until we puke!