Easter Excitement

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Easter was pretty low key this year, between the nasty weather and the fact that Dada hadn't been particularly indoctrinated into the whole Easter thing (we didn't really want to stress a holiday that is essentially about candy given Dada's chocolate dependency and her day care,while run by a Christian church, perhaps felt that the doctrinal issues of death and resurrection were not quite within the intellectual grasp of three-year-olds and while I fully appreciate the ancient animist association of spring with rebirth and the return of life, a full pagan celebration seemed a bit much, especially given that we had to cut the 1/4-scale Stonehenge from the construction budget. And we couldn't even stay up late enough to watch The Ten Commandments this year.).

But Uncle Jay did come by with a present for Dada, a little wind-up chicken that lays jellybean eggs. The thing is hilarious and Dada loved it. Here you can see Jay and Julie and Dada playing with the chicken.

Julie did dye a few of our own eggs using food coloring--they came out really nice (I'll post some pictures in another post) and we had a very brief egg hunt Sunday morning (it was quite cold and a bit damp).

We actually spent most of the weekend watching airplanes take off and land. A group called the Collings Foundataion had brought three WWII bombers to Austin airport and Dada and I both wanted to see them. So even though the weather was frightful (cold rain and wind with a threat of sleet) we all went out to the airport and found the planes. We got to walk around the planes and climb around inside, which was fun, but because of the weather the planes were not flying and there were no other planes flying as well. There was a B-24, a B-25 (same model I took a flight in on my 40th birthday), and a B-17.

The next day Dada was "we go to the airport where the airplanes are and see more airplanes?"

I couldn't see a reason not to. The weather had improved, in that the rain had moved off even though it was cold. So about noon Dada and I bundled up and headed back out to General Aviation. This time the venerable war birds were flight ready. But in addition, the airport was alive with other airplanes, including a tarmac full of small passenger jets waiting to take off.

Where we were was a small private executive jet center. Dada liked the WWII planes but she was completely captivated by the variety of aircraft taking off and landing around us. We had been there about an hour or so when we learned that the bombers would start flying around 4:30. So we decided to stay, rather than go home and then come back (since we're only 10 minutes from airport we certainly could have), largely because Dada simply didn't want to stop watching the airplanes. She also liked the well-stocked snack room there in the jet center, which had remarkably non-skanky microwave food and, most importantly, ice cream.

So we ended up waiting until about 5:00, when the B-17 finally took off, meanwhile watching everything from Southwest 737s to little single-engine Cesnas take off and land. Finally, about 5:30, after watching the B-17 land and come back to get another load of riders, we went home, cold and tired, but thrilled by our afternoon of airplane watching.

Not a particularly traditional Easter activity, but Dada definitely enjoyed it.